OWAV:)...05/28/11...4am...34°

No scrabble games waiting for me...played angry birds, trying to improve (for no reason) some of my scores...

My mind as I typed this date goes to my mom, today would have been her 102 birthday...she has been gone almost seven years...but my mind also goes to my brother, George, his birth date 05/25/31, gone for three years...then to my dad, his birthday 05/14/07, gone for almost 50 years...While killing pigs, my mind kept flashing through Daddy's life...

Born Elmer Isaac Ashton-1907, to George and Idella Ashton...the fifth child in a family of eight...His mother injured in a horse and buggy accident, confined to a wheelchair, died when he was twelve...soon to appear was a "wicked stepmother, Belle"...Daddy quit school after eighth grade...worked herding sheep from the age of ten...staying away from home... reasons, stepmother and sometimes abusive father...lived with and partially raised by uncles on his mother's side, uncle's Rawl and Marsh Eastman..at an early age he learned to whistle, the uncles nicknamed him "Whistling Joe", Joe stuck with him the rest of his life, only on legal documents did the name "Elmer" appear...While herding sheep and "cowboying", a woman living on her parents neighboring ranch stole his heart...or maybe it was her two daughter's, Loraine and Barbara, from a previous marriage, who soon called him "Daddy Joe"...Daddy loved children and claimed the girls as his own when he married Blanche Parkin Fields in 1930..."Joe" cowboyed, rodeoed, and took a full time job working in the coal mines in Diamondville, Wyoming...Most of the people in Diamondville were of Italian decent, it was the prohibition era and the years of the great depression...My two older sisters have fond memories of this time, although their life was wrought with hardship...Joe and Blanche became parents, two sons and a daughter, George born in 1931, Joel in 1934 and Mona in 1936...Tragedy struck in December of 1936 with Joel's death, double pneumonia, antibiotic's not available...Mona, two weeks old and Christmas five days away...The family struggled on, Joe was in a mining accident, vertebrae broken in his back...to be continued

http://www.diamondvillewyo.com/history.htm
check out the history of Diamondville, Wyoming