First Winter 1973...27º

After spending a summer on the hill (Barton Heights,) we had met all of our neighbors and felt comfortable in this little neighborhood that was still in the city limits, had city water and sewer but was removed from main street...We attended the Chief Joseph Days Rodeo, including a carnival for the kids, we could hear some of the noise but didn't have to deal with having the carnival set up next door or people parking on our lawn, like the people did, that lived "down town."

All of the houses on Barton Heights sat on a small acreage and we were connected to town by a foot bridge that spanned not only the Wallowa River but an irrigation ditch as well...We used this bridge daily for many years...Our neighbors, Williams' to the South, had a milk cow and to the North, Lewis' had horses, so it was a rural part of the city...Mr. Williams was the school superintendent, and he and his wife Jane become not only neighbors but lifelong friends...All the kids in the neighborhood were either older or younger than our kids, so only fleeting friendships were made on the hill...I will write more about our neighbors at another time.

With the kids back in school, weather cooling off, we found that Joseph was known for its "Indian Summers."..A time to enjoy cool evenings, brisk fall days, the changing not only of the leaves but the yellowing of the tamarack...It was a time to hunt deer/elk, get a supply of firewood for the winter and get serious about winterizing the house...Sometime during the summer, Herb had partitioned off a small space, in the basement for a fruit room...He and Dad built shelves and I stacked all the canned goods that we brought with us from Utah, plus what I canned that first summer...In another corner of the basement, with a dirt floor, he made a space to store wood to keep it dry and easy to access for the winter.

That first winter was a struggle to keep the house warm...First thing we did was cover the windows with plastic but the two heat sources were so close to one another that we had to use one or the other or we ended up with a house full of smoke...We made it through the winter and by the next summer had convinced the landlord that the floor furnace was a big mistake and they agreed to install an oil furnace with duct work to all rooms of the house..(Actually only one vent to the upstairs but it worked.)Herb also installed a barrel stove in the basement, knowing that if we could keep the floors warm, the oil furnace could do a better job of keeping the rest of the house warm...Hugs To All...OWAV:)