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Archiver > NORCAL > 1999-02 > 0920257167
From: <>
Subject: Aunt Charlotte's book ( Gold Rush)
Date: Sun, 28 Feb 1999 21:59:27 EST
I was terribly lonely while Father was away to the mines. There was no one to
sing to me. I missed the thrilling stories that he was always willing and glad
to tell, when we all sat around the fireside in the evening. Father's life had
been very eventful. He never had to tell of the experiences of others or to
draw upon imagination. He had the fine faculty of making one see the things as
he had seen them. The stories that he told of his boyhood, of the war of 1812,
the Indian wars and his flatboat days on the Mississippi River, would make a
book of themselves. I remember a great many things but I could not tell them
as he did. It would not seem right for me to try to repeat them.
I missed him, and he was gone a long while. There was nothing to do and no
one to play with. I used to go to the river. Henry was gone too, and Lizabeth
stayed at our house. Sometimes she was inpatient. I know now that she was not
well. Mother was not very happy. Things at home had not gone on as she wanted
them to. The big storehouse of supplies that Father intended to last us while
he was away, had burned to the last once of bacon and Mother was worried about
Father, Worried about the boys and about everyone else, who was near to us.
They had all gone to the mines.
There was nothing else for me to do, so I used to go to the old shed on the
bank of the river. It was stored full of potatoes. Henry had grown them and he
called them Scotch-grays. They were big, smooth and round, crisp and white
inside as an apple. I'd stand by the open door and look out across the river
and picture just what Father was going to look like when he came riding home
from California and hal-looed for Jasper to bring the boat. I'd watch the
tall, slender cottonwood trees as they whipped about in the wind. I saw their
tops sweep to the very water, itself. Mother laughed at me when I told her,
but I knew that it was so, for hadn't I stood right there and seen them do it?
I cannot convince myself, even now, that it was fancy, although I know that
cottonwoods are very brittle.
Walt Davies
Monmouth, OR
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