Thomas Harold Skinner

Born: 1894, Jordan Valley, Oregon

Married: Edith Elizabeth Jones, 1919, Jordan Valley, Oregon

Children: Eleanor Irma Skinner, b 1920, Jordan Valley, Oregon

Ernest Harold Skinner, b 1922, Jordan Valley, Oregon

Esther Skinner, b 1929, Jordan Valley, Oregon

Information:

Conversation was taped in August of 1983. Present were: Grandma (Edith Elizabeth Jones married Thomas Harold Skinner), Mom (Esther Elizabeth Skinner Emmel), Kathy (Kathryn Elizabeth Emmel Holcomb), and John (John Ernest Emmel.)

Grandma: There had been other people come out from Lynn. George Hodgins was out at Gentura. May Roberts and her husband were teachers in Ontario. All from Indiana or around there, Landock County. And then a friend of mine from Lynn, I don’t know how she got her school out there. Must have been teachers up in Zesha (?) or something that found out places. But anyway, she went to Jordan Valley. But when George Hodgins and Mrs. Roberts was out there, well, the county superintendent at Vail asked them if they knew of any possibilities of anyone from Indiana who would like to teach. So they gave them my name and she sent me a telegram.

Esther: Did they ask you if you were interested or did they just give her your name out of the blue?

G: Well, they just gave it to her. And, so I thought …. Well, the telegram said they wanted a teacher at this private school 75 miles from Caldwell, Idaho, by stage. I thought it all sounded real good so I got the bug. Well, of course, my folks had just as soon I didn’t. But we thought I’d go home in the spring. I’d just stay the winter, which I planned to do and I did. And so my father took me to Chicago. He was a ticket agent at the Lynn train depot, so I could go free. Otherwise, I probably never would have gone. I thought, gee, I could go out there and back for nothing. My father was sort of in for it, but of course my mother felt pretty bad, but she didn’t think it was too bad, ‘cause I’d be back.

I didn’t go through college. I’d had some teachers training. I was 21. You could teach back in Indiana with three months of Normal (teacher) Training, and in Oregon at that time you could teach right out of the 8th grade.

So he (father) put me on the train for Caldwell in Chicago. I believe I was on the train about three days and two nights. We got to Caldwell about 4:00 in the morning. It was dark and kinda cloudy. It wasn’t light yet of course at 4:00. I went in the depot. The agent was in there, and I asked him where I would get the stage to go to Jordan Valley. He said, "Are you going to Jordan Valley?" I said yes. "Oh, my goodness," he said, "can you dance?" I said no. My father didn’t, well, there wasn’t ever any dances in Lynn, nobody did dance, so I didn’t know how to. "Well," he said, "you’ll learn. You’ll learn fast, because they’ll shoot at your feet and you’ll have to dance!"

M: What did you think?

G: I thought, Oh boy. I kinda thought it wasn’t really true. Would you?

Anyway, I didn’t know. I thought it sounded kinda wild. But I was that far so I had to go on. And so, then they loaded my trunk on a little cart and hauled it over across where the depot is, over to the Saratoga Inn, and the stage left from there. They left about 6:00 a.m. There used to be a lobby in that hotel there, now the restaurant. The stage, which I thought would be one of those fancy things you’ve seen in the movies, I thought I was gonna be ridin’ in one of them. Well it was a big wagon — what do you call those wagons, Conestoga? It didn’t have a cover on it like they travel in. A freight wagon like they use on farms and ranches. A big bed with sideboards, and a piece in the back that let up and down. And the seat was one of those high seats with these springs. Well, I got up on that high seat and my feet didn’t touch anything! There was a little handle on the side, and just this man. I had ‘visioned there might be more people than me, but I was the only one, with this man.

And so, we started out from Caldwell. It was getting a little bit daylight; it was 6:00 when we left. And we got to Homedale, and there wasn’t any bridges then. There was four horses on this wagon, this great big wagon. It wasn’t a spring wagon, it was one of these great big ones, and it was loaded real high with freight. At Homedale, there was just a restaurant and two or three other buildings. And we stopped and went in there and had a little bite of breakfast. It hadn’t looked so wild just from Caldwell to Homedale. Country looked kinda good. And then from Homedale it started to be the hills and nothing was green. It was all dry. To go across the river we drove on a ferry, kind of a flat thing, just drove the wagon on, horses and all. So we went across the Snake River on this ferry. That was before we had our breakfast. We went across the river and Homedale was on the other side of the river.

Then on into the country. It was so dry and hilly. Old dry hills. It seemed like the sky was down closer to you. I noticed the sky a lot. It just hung right down over us.

Kathy: What time of year was it?

G: September, time for school to start. So there was what they called Little Poison Creek Hill and Big Poison Creek Hill. And the horses just had to strain to pull it up these hills. Then we’d get on top of the hill. There was brakes on this wagon, and he’d cut loose these brakes, whip the horses, and we’d just go gallopin’ down the hill. Whoa! I was just hanging on here to the handle on my side and my feet wasn’t touching anything. He said, "Are you afraid?" and I said "Oh! No."

I thought sure I’d fall off the darn thing, but I didn’t. I hung on. And I was more scared of him, to tell you the truth, than anything else. ‘Cause, there we were out there in those hills, and I didn’t know him or anything, but I guess he had to be guaranteed to be okay or he couldn’t have been driving that stage.

So we got up Little Poison, then we got up the Big Poison. Well, he had a big load on, and it had rained, and the road was really muddy, and that road was nothing but sagebrush cut off. They’d just cut the sagebrush. It was just a trail, that’s all. It wasn’t made like into a road. He had to unload some of his load and he stuck it on the side because it was so heavy he couldn’t get up the hill. So he’d pile off a little of that getting up that hill, and the horses would go. We’d get up there, then we’d go a gallopin’ on down.

K: Did he go back and get the load?

G: Well, I guess they picked it up the next run. Why, he didn’t go back to get it. And then we had lunch at what they called Sands Basin. There was a real good dinner out there. They changed horses, got fresh horses there. Then we left there, went gallopin’ down hill and pullin’ hard up hill. We finally got to Jordan Valley but it was half past 11:00 at night. Quite a trip.

M: You must have been pooped, hanging onto that wagon for 17 hours.

G: Well, I’ve wondered since, how’d I manage that I didn’t go to any toilet? Only at that one stopping point. I don’t know, but I didn’t! When we got to Jordan Valley everything in the town of course was dark, except one place. On it was a light, and great big letters: Saloon. That’s where the stage station was. So we stopped there, and they unloaded me there, and they took me up an outside stairway over this saloon. And that’s where I had a room to stay overnight. There was a better hotel, but of course, I didn’t know anything about it there in the middle of the night.

Then the next morning, well — where this friend of mine was teaching school was probably a couple of miles out of Jordan Valley and I asked about it. Asked where she was. And I went walking out to that schoolhouse. She sure was glad to see me. She had this whole bunch of little kids out there, teaching. She must have had about 12 kids out there. So then, she boarded over there, with some people close to that school. I stayed all night there with her, and the next day, Grandma Skinner and Bill, her boy, came after me, and they came out there and got me. We went back to town, and they took me to that good hotel, and we had dinner there. That was a real nice hotel. Well, that’s that big rock hotel, you’ve seen it still there. It’s falling down now, it’s a wreck, just a shame, ‘cause it was a nice hotel then. So we had lunch there, then we went home back to the ranch. It was real nice when we got there.

M: What were you thinking of when you saw what it was like? All that sagebrush and bare hills. Did you have any idea?

G: Why, no!

M: She hadn’t told you at all?

G: Oh, nobody told me that. I was real surprised because, you see, in Indiana everything was green. It rained lots there.

K: Did you think about turning around and going back home?

G: No, because I remember my dad said, "Now if you go off there, you know, why you’ll have to stay all winter and teach that school." And I really knew I couldn’t turn around and go back.

M: Was your heart kind of down in your heels after you got out there and saw what it was like?

G: Well, I thought, going over there, "My goodness, this is just the end of the world!" Just hills after hills, and hadn’t ever seen anything out there. Looked like they’d made the world and dumped everything they had left out there. No houses, nothing. Myself and that man on a big wagon with four horses just going a toot-toot up the hills and down the hills, on a path that wasn’t even a road.

M: Did you start teaching the next day?

G: Oh, no, I didn’t start for about a week or so.

K: Did you teach at the ranch?

G: Yes, upstairs at the Ruby Ranch. Skinners had the Ruby ranch rented along with their house. Ruby Ranch was about three miles from the Goose Ranch. Up at their house, they called it the old house, but that’s where their men lived, that worked on the ranch. We stopped there. The first time I ever saw Dad (Harold), they had a lot of hogs out there, and he was out there feeding those hogs. So they stopped and introduced me to him. He was all whiskery and his hair was long. I thought he looked just really wild. Anybody told me I’d ever gone with him and married him I’d have thought they was crazy!

I supposed he was about 35 years old, and I thought, gee this man was pretty old. He was probably 20! This was 1914.

Then we went on down to the ranch, and they were just so nice. There was the girls, five girls and Grandma Skinner. They had a cook then, too. They were really nice. That night, of course, there was a new school teacher down there, so all the men came down that worked there, and Kirt, Bill, Hugh. Course Bill and Hugh was already at home down there. They all come down, sat around in the living room. They played the piano. They wanted to know if I could, and I could but I didn’t get up and play that night.

M: They had built the big ranch house, then.

G: Oh, no. All they had down there was an old house, they called the Old House. And they had lived in it till they rented the Ruby Ranch. So they moved down there five years, and they built the new house. They moved into that new house in 1917. Anyway, Grandma Skinner played the piano and they sang songs, like these popular songs, you know. Popular at that time. All these men and the girls sang. They was really nice.

K: Did they make you dance? Did they shoot at your feet?

G: No, they didn’t start in on me that night! But they did teach me to dance. These men would come down to the Ruby Ranch and they’d roll the dining room table over in the corner, and Grandma Skinner would play, or the men would play these trench harps (harmonicas), Dad and Kurt, Hugh, and Bill. They’d dance to that. It was waltzing and two-stepping and like that. They’d do that a lot of Friday nights, the men would come down and dance and sing. It was really nice. We had school upstairs.

M: Who were your students? I never could figure that out because most of the Skinners were grown up.

G: Well, Bill, and Ella, Beatta, Hugh, Blanche Chard, and Ruby. Verna and Irma were gonna take some high school but they didn’t. They just didn’t get started ‘cause there was so much work to do. Their cook quit, so three girls took turns cooking. I don’t know, Grandma Skinner, she took it kinda easy and the kids did all the work.

M: Well she’d had nine kids by then; I don’t suppose she was very strong, was she? Wasn’t she overweight?

G: Yeah, she was pretty heavy. So, well, we had a good time. At Christmas time, why that winter, Harold’s dad and mother, and they took Harold. Kurt had been to some school in Napa (California), took some bookkeeping or some kind of business training, and he was back at the ranch. But Dad (Harold) hadn’t got to go down there. So they took Hugh and Dad, and went down there and stayed over Christmas. They went down to Winnemucca, and went down on the train to Berkeley. Visited Grandma Skinner, Aunt Carrie, Margaret, and all of them.

Then we had an awful good time there at the ranch over Christmas vacation. Four or five teachers from up in town came to stay the week down there.

In spring, this George Hodgins that taught down at Gentura, and a friend of hers, her folks had come out here and were renting an apartment in Portland, father and mother. So I met them in Ontario. I went out on the stage, on about the 5th of July. I was at the ranch over the 4th. They had a big dance in town. We all went. Anyway, I met these people in Ontario. We went to Portland and stayed about a week. Then they gave up their apartment there, and we went on the train down to the World’s Fair in San Francisco. And then from there I went home to Lynn. They had different tickets than the way I had to go, so I couldn’t go with them. But they left the same day I did. I went through Salt Lake City.

K: But you went back to Jordan Valley. What made you go back?

G: I just wanted to. I decided I’d teach school some more. I went down to Salem. There was a school down there, kind of a normal school for teachers. I can’t to save my life think of the name of that school. Kind of a private school. And I studied like heck, because, you see, that private school I was teaching at I didn’t have to have a certificate. But I kind of wanted to have one. So I went back, and went down there to that school and studied real hard. Then I took the examination, got real good grades. After that examination was over, I went to Jordan Valley. Then I got a school over at Druisy (?). I had to ride horseback three miles from where I stayed over to that school. I had every grade from the primary through the eighth grade. Boy, that was really rough. Boy, I hated that in the winter time. The man where I stayed would saddle up my horse for me. But that was real cold weather, the snow was deep and I was riding that thing. Then at Christmas time, Aunt Ruby wanted me to come to the ranch for Christmas, so I came back to Jordan Valley. I remember Dad met me at the stage in Jordan Valley. It was beautiful. The moonlight—a starry shiny night we drove down from Jordan Valley down to the ranch. There was snow on the ground. All was a dream that night.

K: Was that when you fell in love with him?

G: I think probably. Had a little bit of an idea. I think he did, too. So then, Alice McDonald was teaching this school a mile and half or so up Jordan Creek. She quit that school ‘cause she got a school in town. So they gave me that school. I wanted it. You couldn’t quit without giving a month’s notice at my school, so I gave them notice. Boy, was I glad to get out of that place. They said as long as I was leaving and had a new school I’d just as well go, so they let me go before the month’s notice was up. They got a teacher from somewhere.

M: What did the ranch do for a teacher if you didn’t go back there?

G: Well, Johanna went back. She had been there the year before I was there. She graduated only out of the 8th grade. She had uncles down at John Day, and one cousin down at Druisy. They had ranches there; they were sheep men, her relatives. They were from Scotland. Johanna Murray, Uncle Kirt’s wife. John and Dan, and their mother. When the war broke out, she didn’t intend to stay, only just a year or so. She didn’t come really to teach school, I think she came to visit her relatives. Then she got this school, and into teaching. So they she couldn’t go back to Scotland on account of the war, and then she got married to Kirt, so that fixed her! Finally, she and Kirt did get to go back to Scotland, after the kids were all grown up. I went home to Indiana four or five times before I was married. I wasn’t married till 1919. Well, the war was over. Dad (Harold) had to go in the war. I’d got a school in town, and I stayed with Mrs. Shaft. They were really nice. I just had the 3rd and 4th grade. That was easy to teach. We had state books. Kids were really good.

K: How were girls courted?

G: Well, about the only thing to do was take a walk down the road and back. They didn’t go to all the dances, because you had to go in horse and buggy. But they went to the important ones in town. New Year’s, Christmas, 4th of July, and those kind. And when they went, the whole family went. Along toward morning they’d go to the hotel, go to bed and sleep pretty late in the day. They’d have two big dances, as long as they’d made all that trip there. Then they went home. Uncle Tom, he wasn’t married yet, and he lived down there. Oh, the girl’s boyfriends would come down from town or wherever they lived and visited. They’d wash dishes and wipe dishes. The girls would have to cook and be out in the kitchen so they’d do the dishes. That’s where you did your courting. And they churned butter. The boys would help run the churn.

Aunt Beatta was just a little girl, she was the gooseberry. A little sour pain in the neck. She’d say "I’m gonna be your gooseberry." They’d gooseberry her out of there as fast as they could!

They had one car over there that belonged to Ed Stouffer. He was a big cattleman over there. He liked Harold, and liked to have Harold drive his car. So lots of times Harold got to drive here and around and take me places. They had his car down at the ranch quite a bit. That was one thing we did. We’d all pile into that car then take a ride. That was after they built the new house and lived up there at the new house. We’d put on our hats and tie a big scarf down over this hat under our chin, you know, ‘cause there wasn’t any top on the car. Then we’d go whizzing down the road to the Ruby Ranch. 15 miles an hour! Whizzing! We thought that was really something. We’d fit all we could get into that old Ford car and have a ride down to the Ruby Ranch and back. Maybe we’d go on down to Nel Parks’. She lived just about a mile the other side of the Ruby Ranch and we’d visit her. I guess Uncle Tom and Aunt Violet had married by then and lived at the Ruby Ranch. We’d visit them a little bit, then go back.

John: How long were you and Grandpa going together before you got married?

G: Well, it must have been about 1917, I guess, cause they’d just gotten into the new house. Then he had to go into the war, into the army. Must have been about three years, I bet.

K: Did Grandpa go overseas?

G: No, he didn’t need to go overseas. He’d just got all his stuff and was ready to go.

M: He always said they heard he was coming and ended the war. The Germans heard he was coming and that was enough for them!

G: I was glad he got out of that. We got married in 1919.

K: Did you stay at the ranch after you got married or go somewhere else?

G: We had to stay on the ranch there. Eleanor was born there. Bud, too. Everybody lived there, that got married. They all lived in that same house. Got kinda crowded. You kinda wished you had a house of your own. Nobody ever had any fights or anything. Kirt and Jo finally got a little homestead. I think Grandma Skinner loaned them about a thousand dollars to get that little house, probably about a mile from that big house.

M: What was it made of?

G: Lumber.

J: Did they live in that quite awhile? I remember going to a little tiny house, didn’t we visit them?

M: Well, they wouldn’t still have been living in it when we would have visited, would they?

G: Doesn’t seem like it. Well, when Bob (Kirt’s son) got married, he lived at the ranch for awhile ­ he moved that house of Kirt’s up there where his house is now. Maybe that’s the house you went in, ‘cause it was little then. They moved it up there, built a basement, then they’ve added all this to that one little house. That one little house is in the middle.

M: For awhile you lived on the Owyhee River.

G: Yeah, we did go down there for about a year and a half. Just sort of to live by ourselves I guess. M: Isn’t that kind of close to Rome? Can’t you see where that was when you go on that road to Rome?

K: Oh, I remember.

M: Yeah, we’d come down that hill, and I sometimes said, "Grandma and Grandpa used to live down there someplace."

G: It’s kinda out to the left, as you go over that bridge. Don McDonald, Bob and their mother, Alice, when she was at home in the summer. They lived down there. They had a little ranch down there that wasn’t worth anything much, but they lived down there quite a bit. Don and Bob stayed there. Then Grandma Jones (Edith’s mother) came out here after Ernest (Bud) was born. We lived down on that river place then, but that was right. Bud was born in town. And she stayed with us that summer, and in September I went home with her (to Lynn), with the two kids. Dad came back up to the ranch. He didn’t stay down there. Then Ruby and Evan built a little house up there, out not too far from the ranch. I don’t know what ever become of that little house. They lived in that. Then we fixed up that back part of that house that I said was the Old House on the ranch that was there at the very beginning. We lived in that for a couple of years. And then we moved to the Ruby Ranch and lived down there a couple years. Then they didn’t rent the Ruby Ranch anymore. They rented that house for Harold and I to live in up there by Aunt Violet’s. That rock house where you (Esther) was born.

K: Is that where you killed the rattlesnake?

G: No, I killed the rattlesnake at the Ruby Ranch. Outside the back door. There was a big wooden box for some reason, setting outside the back door at the Ruby Ranch. Open this way, and tall. And I went out that back door and I saw this snake, a rattlesnake. It had rattles, and it was startin’ around that box on the far side. That shovel was there, where someone had been irrigating, there on the back porch. So I picked it up and thought, "well, I’ve got to get that snake," ‘cause I couldn’t let the kids go out or anything. So I stood there with that shovel in my hand and when he stuck his head around that box there, I just snapped his head off! My shovel went clear down in the ground, I hit him so hard.

K: Did you see very many snakes when you were out there?

G: That’s the only one I ever saw. But there were a lot of them out there. A lot in the rocks and logs, you know. The men were always killing them. The horses would scare at them.

K: How did the men kill them? Did they shoot them?

G: No, they didn’t carry guns. I don’t know how they killed them. They must have killed them with rocks, because I know they talked about killing rattlesnakes. There was so many of them, there was always another one to take the place. But, you know, it seemed strange. It’d get so hot in the daytime, then at night it would be so cold. Seemed so different than back in Indiana, where it was hot all night if it was hot in the day.

J: Where did you go for a honeymoon?

G: Why, we went all the way to Boise! That was quite a trip in those days!