Forward
I think it is ironic that the people you spend most of your life knowing, i.e. your parents are often the people you know the least about. I can’t say if that is true in general, but with my parents, and my knowledge of their life, it has been. I know very little of their early years, and even of the years I grew up, my knowledge of them is just about the relationship with myself. I know very little of the relationships, the hopes, and the disappointments they felt, those things that are common in everyone ’s life. It was because of this I asked my mother to tell me about her life. I asked her to start to write down her memories. It was apparently difficult for her to do. But she made an effort. I kept at her to keep writing. This is the result. As I discover old photographs of her, and her sister and brother, this story helps those photos come alive. I don’t think she understood how important it was to me to know who she was as a person, rather than as a mother. And while I wish I had more of her story, I am grateful to her for what she was able to give.
Robert Wallace
My Story – by Jane Wallace
This is the story of my life as I want it remembered. It may not be true but it is how I remember.
I hope everyone who reads this will believe that I do tell the truth. I started life in Lewiston, Idaho even if my Mom and Dad lived in Clarkston, Washington. I was known as Brown Betty and another baby was known as Betty Brown, and I was really a brown baby.
I had a lot of trouble with my name as my mother and father were expecting a boy and had no name for me. Finally my Uncle Cub gave me the name of Jane Elizabeth saying he could give me my father’s initials even if he could not give me his name. After that kind of a start I grew into a happy fat baby and soon learned to love my big sister, Marianne. She was the petite blond beauty and everyone admired her, including me. We have a lot of pictures of the two of us when we were quite little, but as we grew up we no longer stood beside each other. I guess I didn’t want to look so fat.
When I was about one and half we moved to Baker, Oregon and lived in a house on Third Street. I remember an upstairs window that reached to the floor, and that we had a piano box out in the back that we could play in. I was old enough for a tricycle before we moved from that house and I remember riding around the block and having a neighbor that was a judge. He had a goatee and was a delightful old man. If I remember properly his name was Judge McCullough. There are some pictures of Marianne and me at the front door of the house on 3rd street.
The neighbor on one side was a family by the name of Yeager. They were a couple and they had a relative that was diabetic. It was the first time I was aware of things like that. The neighbor on the other side was a Mrs. Ralston. I do recall that I heard that she was a retired Madam. She had a Victorola and it had a big horn with lots of colors inside. She also had a back yard that had a board walk out under the clothes line so she could hang up clothes without getting her feet wet.
We moved from 3rd St. to 11th Street to a little old house that did not have inside plumbing. It was a sad place. It was on the wrong side of the railroad and was painted red, much to mother’s disgust. It was a poor neighborhood and your grandmother was most upset but as children we didn’t know the difference. We had a street on one side of the house and a vacant lot on the other side. It did not have inside plumbing and we had a “white Owl” (a white owl is a chamber pot.) There was a cot in the living room that I got to lay on when I was ill, and I must have been ill a few times since I remember it so clearly. I also remember running over to the Yeager’s and falling in the vacant lot that was between the two houses. I cut my wrist and still have the scar.
The doctor that took care of me was Dr. Gordon and I think he was really a nose and throat doctor, and maybe he did eyes. He cauterized the wound. In those days they used cauterization to make sure that you didn’t get an infection. I can still remember the smell of burning flesh. We also found a sack of candy one day and Mother let us keep it. When I talked to Marianne she said that it was chocolate and marshmallow but I don’t remember that. I found that her memories and mine don’t seem the same, but she was older and probably does remember more that I do. Now that I think of it, I just have fleeting memories of that time.
I know that we left that house and moved to Valley Avenue. It was stucco house and Mother was most unhappy there, so we didn’t stay too long. I remember going outside and picking the little sparkles out of the stucco. We also had allowances when we lived there. I saved mine and Marianne spent hers. Marianne also went to school, but I was too young.
When we left there we moved to an old house on 6th St. in North Baker. It was an old house and we had to do a lot of things to it. The Dining room had green wainscoting (Marianne said that it was green burlap but I remember the red wallpaper on the top. The house also had a cupola over the entry hall. Dad did a bit of remodeling and changed the walls so we had a living room and a dining room and the kitchen had a pantry and a back porch. The kitchen sink was in the back of the kitchen in the pantry. Sometime during the time we lived there the entry hall was opened up and the living room and dining room flowed together.
We hadn’t been there too long when we moved again to a house on 8th Street. It sat below the sidewalk and was a nice house. I don’t remember the address of this house but we were living there when my brother Jack was born, and I can remember Mother trying to tell Marianne and me about where babies come from. Hadn’t been there too long when we had to move back to the house on 6th Street since the sale fell through. I think we were there when Jack was born. I remember that Mother was pregnant when we were on 8th Street but I only remember Jack as a baby on 6th Street.
The years on 6th Street are quite vivid in my mind. We had a tree in the front yard that we could climb, and we had lots of freedom in the neighborhood. Dad owned a title business in Baker and his office was in the basement of a downtown building. The entry had wrought iron around the steps and I can remember going down there many a time.
Baker had beautiful falls and we had lots of fallen leaves to make houses out of and played lots of games that way. We also had lots of vacant lots that were full of weeds and we played in those during the summer and made tunnels through them. We also had alleys that were fun to play in. Most houses on our street had barns that opened on the alleys and we played cops and robbers along the alleys.
I started school at North Baker after we moved to 6th Street, and it must have been the first time we lived there. I had a first grade teacher that put the fear into me right from the beginning. Some little boy stuck out his tongue at the teacher and she made him stick it out again and she hit it with a ruler. I really minded by p’s and q’s after that. But I am sure I was a good little girl at that time.
I started first grade in the middle of the year and then went into the second grade the next fall. Had a good second grade teacher by the name of Miss Kellog and got along very well in grade school. We had few advantages but did have a music teacher once a week and also an art teacher on the same schedule. There are lots of fleeting memories from school. I helped write a play about the pioneers that was put on the front steps of the school, and I will never forget how they picked on a girl who was not one of the best. She ate garlic and also chewed gum. One day they made her stick the gum on the end of her nose and paraded her all over the school I was horrified and have never forgotten how terrible it is to humiliate someone.
Mother had Scarlet Fever right after Jack was born and he picked up an infection and lost most of his hearing in one ear. He was sickly most of his first year. He was a pale baby with blue veins and many a time he seemed limp in his crib. He outgrew that though, and when we finally moved from Baker he was fairly healthy although the day the movers came for the furniture he came down with the mumps. It was early February and very cold but we started out and got as far as Pendleton the first day. We stayed in a hotel and I flirted with the bell hop. One of Dad’s friends told me that the boy had lace on his panties. It took me a few years to understand just what he meant.
We drove from there to Portland and sneaked Jack into the hotel. The hotel was the Multnomah which is now an office building. I think we must have stayed there more than one night since I can remember walking around some of downtown Portland and being afraid that I would get lost. We were headed for Coquille and there we stayed until I was grown and out on my own.
Coquille was a small town and it is now even smaller. It was the county seat. Dad had bought a Title company and the office building was full of fleas. In those days we didn’t know that if there had been animals in the building and were there no more, the fleas would jump on the first human flesh to come into the place. We stayed at the hotel and Marianne and I had to share a bed. She was a little mean and one night Mother came into check on us and I wasn’t in bed. She panicked and called downstairs to find out what had happened to me, and I was on the floor beside the bed because Marianne wouldn’t let me sleep with her.
We bought a nice house in Coquille and I was most impressed since it was quite elegant compared to the house we had in Baker. It was up the hill on First street and had a daylight basement and one bedroom on the main floor and two bedrooms upstairs. It also had a large open hall that was made into a bedroom for Jack after Mother’s mother came to live with us. We had a lot of freedom in Coquille and I must have been hard to handle since I was always up and away.
I started to school in the 7th grade and immediately had a group of girls to run around with. Marianne was in high school and I think she missed the people she knew in Baker. About three years after we got to Coquille Mother inherited money from Aunt Fanny. It was a lot of money for those times and our lives changed somewhat. We now had store bought clothes and new furniture.
About the time I was 15 Nano (Mother’s mother) came to live with us and she got the downstairs bedroom and Mother and Dad took over the upstairs bedroom, and Jack got the room in the hall. I remember lots of things we did during the time we lived on 1st street. Had lots of neighbors and during the summer we played and played. As we got older summer meant boys and girls and we used to have ice cream parties some evenings. Betty Brady who lived across the street had an ice cream freezer and the boys would furnish the milk and we would furnish the rest. Took me years to realize that the boys had swiped the milk.
But it was a fun time and we swam in the Coquille river and had picnics and rode bicycles all over creation. That was one of the perks of Mother’s inheritance. We had two nice boys bicycles and Marianne and I rode to Myrtle Point and all over town. I roller skated in the street, and one day I was coming down a hill and saw a car so I jumped the curb and fell and broke a tooth. For a number of years I had a hunk of gold in the middle of my smile. I was too young to have the tooth capped so there I was. Took me quite a while to learn to smile showing my teeth.
I also learned to drive somewhere along the way. I had a hard time getting my driver’s license. We had a driving examiner that come to town every two weeks and I took three times to get passed. He was a not nice character and would tell you to do something that was not right and I didn’t know enough to tell him “no”. I finally put the golf clubs in the car, drove with my skirt somewhat high and after a trip around the block, got that great piece of paper. Now I finally had my drivers license.
Now I was ready to roll. I already had had one accident before that time and got away, Jack and I, with it. I was driving down the highway and got hit by a logging truck. I was lucky and didn’t get a ticket and no one asked me for my license. I chased the log truck through Coquille and I guess we had a conversation.
This time I was working for my dad at the courthouse. I typed legal descriptions for him and felt quite good about it.
[I think I may master this stupid machine one of these days but I still hit a lot of wrong keys. Maybe one of these days I’ll know what I am doing. Now I’ll keep trying to find the right keys and go on from there.]
High School was a drag. I worked in the office for the school principal. That was the only way they could keep me going to school.
[My son lent me an old Compaq computer to use to type this story, and I am having a difficult time figuring it out.]
I spent my freshman year doing the drawings for the kids in biology and after that year I corrected papers for the English teachers. I wanted to take mechanical drawing but was denied that class since they felt I would be a distraction in the class. I took Algebra one year and then the teacher would not have me in another class so I missed out on any other math course. Even with all these handicaps I managed to get through and graduated and when I took the entrance exams for the University I didn’t have any trouble.
After I graduated I got a job at the local plywood company. I think a little pressure was applied to get me hired but I worked hard and I learned a lot. The boss was a hard master and had me in tears some of the time but it was good experience and when I left I was somewhat experienced—mot as good as I thought I was but I did learn how to deal with hard taskmasters.
About that time my father got the idea that I should get out of Coquille and see how the rest of the world lived. Marianne was in Portland and lived at a residential hotel. I came to Portland and moved in with her. I have a feeling that I gave her a bad time but I had fun. I typed theses for some of the students at Reed College and played around with some of Marianne’s friends and a few that were not really friends. We ate in a dining hall and Marianne would tell me not to cry and with that I would start to cry and she and the other girls at the table would take my plate and swipe my food.
I think I gave Marianne a bad time . She never knew just what I was doing and I was having a good time and not working. She lined up a job for me with an outfit that was in the bartering business and then she worried about me and worked for them too. We did all sorts work. I don’t remember all the things we did but we worked in lots of strange places and at odd hours. Don’t remember how long this lasted but Marianne used some of her bartering points to wallpaper our cousin’s bedroom. Whether I got paid or got bartering points I don’t recall. Anyway I got a job out on Hawthorne and worked a few weeks there. I walked across the Hawthorne bridge and I did some typing for these people but about that time I was offered a job in Salem at the Public Utility commission.
Through our cousin I was able to rent a room with Mrs. Gray. She was a dear old lady that had fallen on hard times. I was years in realizing what a rough time she was having. I am sure that part of the time she didn’t have enough to eat. I found out later that my cousin Bob had arranged the whole thing.
I worked there for a couple of years, quit once and then went back. Life was not all peaches and cream, the pay was poor and I had many an hour when I went walking just for something to do. I ate at boarding house for $20.00 a month and paid $11.00 a month for a room. That didn’t leave much to have fun with. I did learn about a swimming pool within walking distance and during the summer I would go there after work. On Saturday I would take the bus to Portland and would invade my cousin’s house. I am sure that they hated to see me but didn’t know how to tell we that I really wasn’t welcome. After my aunt moved to Portland I started descending on her.
The war years came while I was in Salem. I was at the boarding house when the news of Pearl Harbor came over the radio. Lots of things changed after that . I stayed in Salem for awhile and looking back I seem to have some confusion about time. Somewhere along the way I quit working at the PUC and went to San Francisco. I didn’t stay down there too long. I went to Munson’s school for private secretaries and found that I had had too much experience for the schooling I was getting. I lived in a Women’s Hotel and someone there talked me into helping out a family who had a sick mother. I did housework for a week or two and then I got a job with Armstrong.
That was a bad deal. I walked in the door and they had six month’s filing piled on my desk. They all wanted to dictate. I took all the dictation. Went home and thought about it, and went back the next day and quit. That day I had a call from my old boss at PUC wanting we to come back, so away I went.
Postscript
This is as far as she got. I know that she was in L.A. in 1942. She got pregnant in 1945 and gave birth to my half-brother Richard.
My sister Susan was born in 1947 and I was born in 1951.