OWAV:)...05/29/11...5am...37°...Cloudy

Good comments on my blog yesterday...Thank you all very much!..That is an easy way to get my thoughts on paper, because sometimes they come so fast and furious that I have to be quick or I lose them...I hope to eventually expand on many of these thoughts to make complete stories...Stay tuned.

Yesterday morning Herb fixed ham, eggs, hashbrowns and toast for our breakfast...He has started doing breakfast the last few years and has gotten good at eggs, oatmeal and cold cereal...I certainly don't complain, nice to have someone else cook...After blogging I went to a couple of yard sales and the opening day of the Farmers Market here in Joseph...a good turnout at the market both in booths and people...had the usual booths and some new ones as well...Kept running into people I know so did as much visiting as looking...fun to reconnect with people after our long, long winter...I bought a few bedding plants and took them to the main street planter boxes...now we have a little more color in the newly cleaned out beds...

Had asked Pam to come to dinner, her choice of day...she picked yesterday, so Herb fixed tri tip steak and I added asparagus, baked potato, and greens served with homemade "Blue Cheese Dressing"...I got this recipe from my sister-in-law Marlene, many years ago...

1 quart good quality mayonnaise, (Not Low Fat) 1/4 -1/2 grated onion, 1-2 cloves grated garlic, few shakes of worcestershire sauce, 2-4 Tbls. lemon juice, and 1/4 to 1/2 lb. bleu cheese...I don't measure, just dump mayo into large bowl, grate onion and garlic into it and add the other ingredients..  Stir well, needs to sit for awhile for flavor to go through...Put back into quart jar and anything leftover is to taste and adjust ingredients if needed...This will keep forever in the fridge, but it never lasts long around here...I add sour cream (to taste) to a small portion when I get ready to serve it...use it as a dressing, dip, sandwich spread, I've been known to clean off the spoon all by itself, nothing added...Yummy!!!  Thank you Molly...

Joe and Blanche Ashton 1950

On with the story...I've been reading from Aunt Peggy's book "Precious Gems" and recordings of Mom telling about her life, that Mona and Jerry transcribed into a document.    Trying to get the sequence right after Daddy's back injury...


The next paragraph is from Aunt Peggy's book "Precious Gems" written by my sister Loraine Smith..."On the third of March 1939, Daddy fell while riding coal down the chute in the cole mine and suffered a broken back.  For the following three years Daddy was in and out of hospitals:  Kemmerer, Mayo Clinic, to a Masseur in Ogden, and Dr. Heater in Salt Lake City.  Dr Heater removed four inches of bone from Daddy's leg and fussed it into his spine, making it rigid so he could not bend from the waist.  He could not work in the mines anymore."


❝The family struggled on after "Baby's" death (that is how Mom always referred to Joel)...Daddy went to work in the coal mines in Diamondville...He injured his back in a  mine accident...in and out of hospitals for several years, to the Mayo Brothers Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. http://www.mayoclinic.org/careerawareness/mi-history.html 
There wasn't enough money for Mom to go with him, so he was just put on the train and and "shipped" back there...Hard to imagine...Mom said that with the back injury he was in the hospitals for a total of 96 days...He was eventually awarded a settlement from the mining company and with that money, in 1940, a small farm was purchased in Porterville, Utah...There was enough money to buy milk cows and a new start was made...Daddy went to work at the Cement Plant in Devil Slide as the janitor...They had to have cash for everyday essentials...In October 1942 I arrived on the scene...Loraine and Barbara soon married, and by my third birthday I was an aunt to George Smith and Alan Reed Stephens...My brother, George graduated from high school, married Marlene Madden...Mom and Dad decided to move again...They drove from Porterville, through Idaho, almost to the Canadian border looking for property to buy...They bought a five hundred acre ranch in Lake Fork, Idaho...December 3, 1950 a caravan of three trucks, (machinery, household furniture and horses) one "touring car" and a pickup truck left Porterville, at 5pm in a rainstorm that soon turned to snow...(another story)...Two days later we arrived at Lake Fork and our new home...There was enough timber on this property to pay off the mortgage...but before Daddy was able to start on the timber a local lumber company made a claim on the timber rights...they came in and started cutting the timber...Many agonizing months later a lawsuit was settled in Daddy's favor, but after the lawyer and all the bills were paid, little money was left over and the timber was gone...He again turned to milk cows for cash flow, got bummer lambs to start a herd of sheep and bought a few cattle to start a herd...He did custom baling and combining, worked our own farm...working daylight to dark trying to make a living and get ahead...Mona and I worked side by side with him whether it was with cows, sheep, driving tractor, milking cows...Mona graduated in 1955, married Jerry Park in 1956, moved to Boston to be a Navy wife...Finally in June 1960 a buyer was found and the ranch was sold...machinery was auctioned off...the dream was that with bills paid off there would be enough money to build a home and retire... Daddy would work odd jobs, again for cash flow...stay tuned..OWAV:)