My Daughters

Once in a big while I get to be with my two wonderful daughters. They have fulfilled every hope and dream I have for them. They are everything my Patriarchal Blessing said they would be. "...you will be blessed with children....with daughters to be mothers in Israel, to be glorious servants and teachers of righteousness to their children." They are beautiful in every way. I am so proud to be their mother. 

The Story of the Magic Birthday Nut

When I was about 6 years old  I went to a birthday party. One little girl named Lyndall gave the birthday girl a walnut with a ribbon tied around it. I thought it was odd until she cracked it opened and there were coins inside that nut. Wow! That was the neatest thing I'd ever seen...like a magic nut!! I decided right there and then I was going to invite Lyndall to MY birthday party!

The day came and she was the very first one on my list of guests. I couldn't wait to get my nut...however....when I answered the door and she stood there on our front porch...with a large flat box...I knew I sure wasn't getting a magic nut. Was I disappointed with paper dolls! I decided to make that be the standard for my grandkids. We have a magic nut tree and I make sure they are never disappointed!

(Grandma) Evelyn Walters Koehler's Life Story

Evelyn and her twin brother, George, were born at Aurora, Illinois, on November 3, 1874 to George and Eveline Walters. They were the youngest and last of a family of seven children. Her father had come from Germany to America with his sister when he was sixteen. He worked hard and completed a high school course in the English language when he was not working on the farm. Ten years after he arrived in America he went to work for the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad as a brakeman and later became a conductor. While working for the railroad he met and married Eveline Smith at Bloomingdale, Illinois. She was from Vermont and of English origin. They lived in Bloomingdale and later in Aurora, until Evelyn was about ten. She and her twin brother were great pals and Evelyn became quite a little tomboy as George included her in all his activities even to sparring with the boxing gloves.

When Evelyn was six her father secured a position with the Van Dusen Elevator Company and was engaged in the construction of elevators throughout the northwest part of the Dakota territory. While there, he filed a contest on a homestead of 160 acres and a tree claim of 160 acres, which he secured in his own name in about 4 years. When the twins were ten the family moved from their fine home in Aurora and settled on the homestead. They lived in a 16 foot square room with an attic and an un-plastered "lean-to" that served as a kitchen and pantry. However when they had assembled their few household effects it seemed quite homelike and they often wondered why they did not need so many of the things they had sold or discarded. The piano was left in Nordland for a Mrs. Bradbury to use. She rented this for one dollar a month. That one dollar a month was about all the money they saw that year…for after paying sixty dollars for the freight car their household things came in, buying a ton of soft coal and some groceries their funds were exhausted.

The children slept upstairs and Evelyn often awakened to find snow had sifted through the roof upon her bed clothing…but the children remained well and it was an adventure to them after city life. Evelyn’s father had a guitar and they used to all sing the old songs.

At last when the spring came the children were like colts, let out to pasture. Their father nearly collapsed when he found that they had let a man pole them across a 15 foot deep prairie lake in a sheet iron shallow sorghum pan.  The boys learned to trap muskrats that first spring and the skins brought 15 cents each.

A year after they had arrived, Evelyn’s father had completed one of the most attractive homes in the farming district of Brookings County.

It was Evelyn and George’s task to keep the family supplied with fuel and she used to tell of gathering buffalo chips on the prairies and twisting hay into hard knots to burn. A goodly supply of these helped to tide them through a big blizzard that kept them in the house for a couple of weeks one winter.

Even after the twins became old enough to date they still went everywhere together. They went to many dances in the surrounding townships and the family made friends quickly.

Evelyn developed a beautiful soprano voice and was much in demand at all celebrations.

The Walters home was a model of farm comfort. Numerous magazines and papers kept the family in touch with the outside world. There was a fine piano and evenings were spent in song and good cheer. The family was members of the Christian church in Arlington and was zealous in religious works. The father took an active part in the political affairs of the township and county.

The two older girls married and moved away. Evelyn thought her mother needed her to help so she delayed marrying until she was twenty four when she married Alvin Koehler of nearby Arlington.  She was decorating her wedding cake and about to marry someone else when Alvin proposed to her. They eloped.

Evelyn and her husband moved to Arlington where Alvin started a barber shop. He built a nice home and they lived there for about 12 years. her husband felt that barber work was too unhealthy and his father and sister had moved to Montana to take up homesteads so Evelyn and he decided to follow suit. They had one daughter born stillborn and another, Lola, born in February 1902, who was about eight years old when they moved. A year after they arrived in Montana, Nellie was born. Evelyn had to go back to her parents’ home in South Dakota to have her as there wasn't a doctor within miles and miles of their homestead.

The Montana years were full of hardships but Evelyn and Alvin worked them out an built a lovely farm of about 500 acres with good cattle. During the first World War Evelyn worked in the fields with Alvin as there was no help available except a preacher who came out from town and quit after 2 days. She learned to seed and run the header and even plow. In the winters they would move into town where Evelyn set up a millinery shop and made beautiful hats to help supplement the family income. In 1918 they had a crop failure from hail stones and another in 1919. The final blow came in 1920 when their crop was wiped out by grasshoppers. They were able to get out of Montana because of an inheritance Alvin received. So they took a little old Ford car and what few belongings they could with them and started out for Medford, Oregon to start a new life. Evelyn’s father had a farm outside of Medford so they stayed with her folks for a few weeks until Alvin found work in a wholesale grocery firm. They lived in Medford until 1923 when they moved to Fort Jones…a little town in the Scott Valley of Northern California.  There they started a dry goods store.

Lola, their oldest daughter, was married by this time and living in Medford. Nellie entered the 6^th grade in Fort Jones. Alvin took up barbering again and marital differences came up and he left Fort Jones. Evelyn sold the store, went into Portland, Oregon, and studied to be a beautician. She then came back to Yreka, California, where her older daughter was living, and set up a beauty shop which she was active in until she was 78 years old. Nellie finished high school here and learned the beauty trade in her mother’s shop. They worked together until Nellie married at 21 and moved a few miles away to Hilt, California.

After the death of her husband 4 years later, Nellie and her little 3 year old son, Larry, came back to help Evelyn with the shop. Evelyn remarried soon after this and moved to Tehama, California, leaving Nellie to run the shop.  Evelyn’s husband died a few years after they were married.

In the meantime, Nellie moved to Palo Alto, California and started a shop of her own. She married a year later. After having 2 little girls, Darlene and Sheri, Nellie turned the shop in Palo Alto over to her mother. Evelyn continued to operate both shops. She lived with Nellie most of the time when not traveling back and forth.

She dearly loved to travel and Nellie and her husband took her on many trips. One she especially enjoyed was back to the old farm house where she lived when she was a girl. The owners let her go all through the house and this she loved. the house was still beautiful and looked as if it could withstand many winters yet.

She loved her granddaughters and enjoyed their frequent visits after they married.

She deeply mourned the passing of her grandson, Larry, (Nellie’s son) in 1957 and her daughter Lola in 1966. But she was determined to be happy around people and not inflict her sorrow on others. She loved to crochet in the later years and made many young brides happy with her beautiful place mat sets that she gave for wedding gifts.

She and her first husband, Alvin, became good friends in 1960 and she helped to take care of him in her last days.

Evelyn became a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints in May of 1960, when she was 86 years old and this she has always felt was the most beautiful experience of her lifetime. 

This is a picture of the skinny couple I used to know about a hundred years ago....

Home Sweet Home

Home...This is the only house I ever lived in growing up. It was a great place. When we first moved in, there were very few houses anywhere close. The "Bayshore Freeway" or the "101"was just a dirt road. Very fast the area built up and homes were built on the block and new families came. Before I was very old nearly every house that was built had a few children until there was appoximately 40 children on the block. Some of these families were: Welte's, Felciano's, Wik's, McDonalds, Smiley's, Susinetti's, Potters, Pablais, Curtwright's, O'Conner's, Skinner's, and Tagert's. Eventually the Baum's, the Roy's, Consani's around the block, Lewandowski's, Randall's, the Houston's and many more. We played 'Hide & Seek', 'Kick the Can', 'Pinky' from the middle of the street and 'House' on a porch or garage of any one of those homes. There were just enough kids to keep us happy and busy...in a day when you just reported home at dusk and nobody worried where their kids were...great times.

My Grandpa Moore and his Family 1875-1967

This picture is my Grandpa Moore and me in front of his house in Springfield, Missouri.

Grandpa was always really loving to me and kind. I was pretty lucky to have so many grandparents growing up, really. Grandpa was Daddy Roy's Dad. I never met my Grandma Moore, (Lena Mae) as she had died during the birth of their 11th child many years before.

Grandpa was of the 'old school'...the really old school. He never left Missouri after he settled there. He never traveled anywhere, either, except to family reunions or to his sister's homes in Arcadia, Kansas. I loved going there to Aunt Lidia & Aunt Martha's homes. Aunt Lidia made gorgeous patchwork quilts, all quilted by hand, not tied. Daddy knew she didn't have much money so he would buy one of her quilts when we came, to help her out. (I gave one to my cousin Kelli, Uncle Harold's granddaughter, that she has now.) They each had wonderful "porch swings" and they always had time to swing on them with me. Both of them also had outdoor toilets way in their back yards. In fact, I remember a very embarrassing moment one time when we were visiting Aunt Martha. I was about 5 and I needed to use the bathroom. I noticed she had a shiny, brand new toilet right there in her dining room! What a find! I just sat myself down and away I 'went'. Uh oh...no toilet paper...I called for my mom and it was then that I got the news...it wasn't connected yet and that WASN'T the bathroom...Mom was horrified...Me too! Aunt Martha just got a rag and cleaned it up laughing all the time. Mom tried to help her but she just acted like it was 'no big deal', but I never forgot it, believe me.

What a great little town Arcadia was. It looked like something out of the "Sweet Tomatoes" movie. We had many 'feasts' at Aunt Lidia's house with the Arcadia relatives. No one could cook like those Moore girls! Always, and I mean always, we would have cobblers to die for...blackberry, apple, strawberry, and peach with vanilla homemade ice cream on top. They would have tons of fresh, right out of the garden, huge perfect sliced tomatoes and just picked corn on the cob that almost didn't need any butter or salt & pepper...at every gathering we ever had. They knew how to cook for a crowd. They always had a house dress on and a cute old fashioned apron. Their hair was always the same, almost white and done up in a bun on the top of their heads. Laughing and telling stories were always a part of their lives there. The grown ups would congregate to do the dishes & clean-up after dinner and the kids would go play in the fields next to the house.

I remember Dad decided to take Grandpa Moore home with us after a reunion one year. He actually took the trip pretty well...but he seemed very confused to me. He would dose off in the car and every time we would come into a town, he'd raise up and say, "Hey, what CAMP is this???" As a child that was something that sounded a little foreign... Daddy just would tell him the name of the town and Grandpa would talk about how much things had changed from 'before'. "You'd never recognize the place" he'd say. "My, how things change...." Then he'd stare out the window for awhile, examining the town asking a question here and there and remarking again and again how things had changed. He was so interested in everything there was. Then, as we would leave the town he would drift off to sleep until the next.

Through the years, I heard that Grandpa was a tough Dad. I always looked at him and found that hard to believe. My thoughts on that are that every generation probably could say, that the one before was tough on them...and even site examples of the toughness and raise an eyebrow or two. But the truth is that discipline has de-celerated over the years to the point that no one is allowed to do much without a child getting a child abuse suit on them or, even as bad or worse, a divorce from their parents. In that and many other valuable ways Grandpa, things in this world really have changed, and I can see now what you were talking about then, more than ever.

Daddy "Brady" 1899-1979

Okay, this could be hard. I'm going to relay the history that I remember Mother, Grandma McClain & Grandma Brady told me. I have very mixed feelings about the whole thing, really, but also I did love my Dad and he was good to me even if it took him years to be good to Mother.
I guess that's how it is when you finally grow up and understand that people do things that change the whole course of their lives because of a single act...or a habit, brought about by the first single act.

I probably need to start with the hard part. Daddy 'Brady' was a product of a split marriage. When Grandma Brady & Grandpa McClain got divorced, Dad went to live with his Dad and his step-mother. He wasn't very old then, about 12. He didn't get along with Ethel very well and eventually ran away from home to join the circus. His dad & Ethel had a little baby boy, Milton. The way I heard it from Mother, Milton turned out to be a very handsome young man. He was quite tall with black hair, piercing blue eyes and a winning personality. Daddy never liked him and resented him terribly. Daddy took on his step-father's name "Brady" to spite his dad and never had much to do with either set of his parents or families after he left home.

He eventually learned to play several instruments but really liked the Saxophone. He started a band and actually did quite well with it. He had that going for him for many years.

When WWII broke out he joined the Army and went to war. He actually earned a Purple Heart in that war. I never heard any stories about his time in the services, but that wasn't uncommon for many of the young men who served in that war. It was just too painful to talk about. Mother said that when he came home he started to drink. I'm not real clear on how they met but I just know it was somewhere in Santa Cruz. Mother had Larry who needed a father figure, but I don't think she knew what she was getting into when she married my Dad. "Brady" eventually bought The Yacht Club in Santa Cruz, at the Harbor. He had quite a bunch of friends there. They would play poker, and sometimes gamble for pretty high stakes. Mother tells of a time where he gambled away the family car one night. He did have some serious vices. He became an alcoholic, and that was the one that seemed to do the most harm to everyone.

Evidently, when he came home from the war and Milton was still out to sea in the Navy. Mom & Dad had been married about 4 years when Mother was about to deliver me. Her sister-in-law, Milton's wife, came to tell them that Milton had been burned to death on the "Nashville" ship while he was taking care of a patient. She was emotionally lost and found refuge in their home. By then, they had Larry & Darlene. Mother always was willing to take people in and feeling the heart-ache of this young woman, she welcomed her and invited her to stay as long as she needed to.

The true heart-ache came when Larry reported that he was locked out of the only bathroom in the house because he had to go through the master bedroom to get to it. While Mother was in the hospital having her baby, Daddy was 'consoling' his sister-in-law, Virginia. Mother gave him a year to decide what he wanted to do. He chose Virginia. Maybe it was the war, maybe it was because he could finally get back at Milton by taking his wife...I guess we'll never know. I met her on several occasions growing up and Mother was, by far, the most beautiful and alive between the two. My Dad & Virginia were basically drunk nearly any time you saw them. I remember one time when he came to visit us and he hit mother. I realized then, that he had made the right choice after all.

I vaguely remember Virgina passing away when I was in elementary school. He had a few years of dating some pretty big fluzzies. I remember being so happy when I met "Pan". She was a classy lady who really seemed to love him. She took care of him until he died when he was 80. There's stories here that I don't need to share, but let it suffice, he was a very lucky and blessed man to have Pan. She was a Princess in my book.

Dad would often say when I was in college and come to visit that "Your Mother wasn't ALWAYS a Mormon, ya know!" That would somehow make me mad, but I didn't think that was any of my business, so I never questioned him as to why he would make a statement like that...after all, neither was I.

One lesson I will never forget that he did teach me, when I was a teenager. I was having a rough time getting along with Mom and decided it would be a great idea if I could just go live with him and Pan and not have to have someone watching me day and night to follow "the rules". I knew that my Dad was an alcoholic and when I stayed there he really didn't watch what I did, he just let me hang out with my friends. He didn't care what time I came in or anything. He would hand me $20 and tell me to have a good time. Sometimes he would say, "Here's the keys to my yacht, take your friends for a ride!" Although I was scared to death of that huge boat, the idea of that kind of freedom can look pretty appealing to a teenager, and I fell into that category quite readily. I really liked "Pan" and she was gone all week to 'the city' (San Francisco) working at a big department store and was only home on the weekend. That also sounded good to me.
I just knew he'd be okay with it. When I told him my plan he sat me down for the first 'Father Daughter' talk I'd ever had or ever would have with him. He was even sober for this one. He said, "You know Sheri, your Mom and I haven't always seen eye to eye. We've spent a whole lot of years mad at each other over one thing or another. I wasn't a good father for you, but your mother has done a good job. We have finally got a good relationship and I'm not going to let you drive a wedge in it with this. You are going to have to know that IF you decide to come and live with us, you can. But, neither Nellie or I are going to let you flit back and forth whenever you get mad at one of us. You are going to have to decide where you're going to be and stick with it. So, what's it gunna be?" -----Wow! I was shocked! But somehow it made me feel really secure; like I had parents that loved me and wanted me to do a solid thing...to be grounded in a decision and stick to it...to take responsibility. It really made me proud of him. He was willing to take me in. I decided I was in the best place for me over-all, and I never regretted it. Mom was the one I wanted to be with. She only was hard on me because she knew I needed rules to survive in this world, and this was the time in my life that I needed them most.