Iva June Kennaday Kelley.

June 13 1923 -- March 13, 2005

Grandfather used to ride the old Chisholm Trail on the stage coach as a guard. In his younger days before he started ranching in Saratoga, Wyoming. One of the fondest memories of my childhood is the time we traveled to Oregon in the old touring car. We stopped at a filling g station for gas and I went to the out- side bathroom they had, it was famous for the thousand springs that flowed down the near-by Mountains. My parents got all ready to go and didn’t know I was still in the bathroom. They left without me and when I came out I started crying and the man from the filling station came out and took my hand and walked down the road a little ways with me. I looked up and saw the touring car with the tents on the fender-running boards and I was really glad to see they had come back for me.

Another memory I have is of my sixth birthday. It was a rule that if you could hide out and no one found you would not be spanked. We lived across the street from an old man who had lots of bushes growing around his place. I hid back under them but they found me anyway. We were always a little afraid the old man would catch us around his bushes which were actually some kind of berries.

     One Christmas I got a doll with a little trunk full of clothes. My sister and Dude Stockwell twisted her legs around until they broke off. I always loved skating and we skated with skates you had to fasten to your shoes. I wanted a pair of shoe skates which were just being made but it took me about four years before I finally got them. There was a small pond near home that we skated on. We would clear the snow off of it with an old coal shovel. We used to take mothers potatoes out and lay them in the fire we built at the edge of the pond. One of our neighbors was the Ramsey family and I remember little boy about five who used to smoke cigars. When we didn’t have sleds to ride down the hills with we would use old cardboard boxes or sometimes we would use the coal shovel,

In recalling events in the home we finally bought in very hard times. It was a struggle to keep all us kids fed and clothed. Mother made many of us girls clothes and sometimes other

People would give us some very nice things and we really appreciated them.

There was a lot of love in our family and we all went to church together and sang in the choirs and attended young peoples meetings  We learned as a family unit to do many things together. We had an old victrola and Mother and father taught to round dance and square dance and sometimes we even had a little dancing at home with my brother Tom and Uncle Harry playing the music. Tom played the guitar and moutharp and Uncle Harry played the violin and Mother played the madaloin. Tom was a real good singer and sang a lot of jimmy Rodgers songs. Mother had a beautiful voice and sang Irish and folk songs and one song I liked springtime in the Rockies. We also had a piano that we all got a chance at some lessons because we let a Mrs. Allen teach others on it and she gave us all lessons. Rose was the only one that ever really learned to play well. Of course Tom played ever musical instrument by ear.

     We had a Shetland pony when we were all small and we rode it until all our legs got too long and it finally died. In the summer we took long walks into the countryside. Our town was small so we could go almost anywhere walking. The Platte River divided the town and we had a special place under the railroad bridge that we used for a swimming hole.

      Every summer our parents took us camping in the Snowy Range Mountains and we would spend about two weeks there. We slept in tents and cooked over a campfire and we smaller children would have a little pole with a string and hook on it to fish with. We caught mostly trout in the mountains.

     When we had parties they were usually at home and we would make taffy and have a taffy pull and the older of us would play spin the bottle and post office. And sometimes Tom would play an old trombone he got a hold of and the older ones would dance.

     We used to sometimes spend some of the summer with; Dad’s sister Emma and her husband Logan. At that time they had Logan’s son Teets and they ran a dairy ranch and we used to help bring in the cows.

     Tom and Gladys were married first as he was the oldest and then Florence and Earl and that left three of us girls at home. Since we were all close to the same ages we did most things together and even dated in a kind of group. We got to go to dances as most of the times our parents went too.

There was a lodge at the foot of the mountains that had dances and they would dance until daylight. One of my very dearest friends Laura Purdin was always with us three girls. She seemed more like a sister than a friend. She had a nice singing voice and I loved to hear her sing Red Sails in the Sunset.