Friday, March 29, 2024

My favorite Christmas

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Preface - During my 70-plus years I have experienced a lot of caring by my mom, dad and sisters. Knowing that they are there for me has made most of the bumps in the road more manageable. Christmas was always a wonderful experience and the enclosed story proved that “sacrifice” is the meaning of a wonderful Christmas and a rewarding life. The following story is one example of my mom and dad’s sacrifices:

My mothers outpouring of love at Christmas every year filled us children with profound feelings of safety, belonging and happiness. I can’t remember a Christmas that my mother didn’t take the time to create a Christmas scene with a mirror set on a table and cotton around the edges. She had collected the small evergreen trees over many years with deer, reindeer, dogs, kids and people all enjoying the ice and snow. She would also set up a Christ in the Manger scene that she had collected for many years. Christmas was truly her most important holiday. She always took the full days time to make Potitsa, the honey, butter and walnut bread that dad’s mom had taught her to make. It is to this day the most cherished Christmas bread of all central Europe. Being the youngest of four children I was the help she needed for her to accomplish so much for so many years. 

She often told me of being a young girl up Fairview Canyon in Monitor and her mother having all the kids who could make it to their house for sledding, ice skating and snowball fights. It was almost a weekly occurance at their house during the winter. Her mom would always make chilly, cookies, and hot cocoa for everyone and no matter how many came there was always enough for all. Mom’s mother had died when she was very young. Being the youngest of eight children she had a pretty rough time growing up. It didn’t help that she had lost her right eye to a rock throwing instance at age fourteen. Her older sister’s and brothers were mostly raising their own families when she married my dad.

 They were married in November 1930 and they left for Helena Montana that night for their Honeymoon. She had no idea of what she was in for. Helena had been hit as normal with over three feet of snow and my dad’s family mine was twenty five miles north and on top of the Continental Divide. Dad had been born in the town of Bald Butte Montana. A frontier mining town that had become a ghost town by 1930 

Upon their arrival in Helena dad had rented horses and a sleigh. Among the provisions for a two week stay at Bald Butte was hay for the horses and all the groceries and provisions for them and the hired man whom had met them in Helena. Mom had come from an eighteen year old to a woman in two short days. She often told me of the trip from Helena northwest to the valley that led up to Marysville , home of the Drummlumen Gold Mine and on over the top. She told of seeing grisled miners whom spent the winters underground dry panning gold and how a few of them had poked their heads up out of the snow after hearing the sleighbells from the horses pulling their sleigh. She thought the experience to be completely unbelievable at that time, with heads poking up and out of the snow. 

Next came the town of Marysville and a stay overnight. The mine was still in operation but a few short years later Marysville became a ghost town. The next morning and after a good breakfast in town the horses pulled the half mile to the top, 6000 ft, and the top of the Continental Divide. From there it’s less than a half mile down the road to the left and into Bald Butte, my dad’s birthplace. It was a total ghost town by then and they proceeded down Dog Creek another quarter mile to a log cabin village named Dog Camp. Dad had lived up there and worked our mine before. He quartered himself and mom in the best cabin and the hired man took one close by. She learned not to knock the percussion blasting caps off the wall shelf with the broom handle when dad and the hired man came in from the mine one night. After explaining and asking dad what they were she said his face went white.

The next years were spent in Monitor with working the huge orchard and packing shed that grandma had purchased the year before. My dad was one of six boys and two girls all born to Anna Mehelich Strutzel and Mikle Strutzel. Dad’s male Russian Wolfhound named Lindy became the model for the Strutzel apple label. This dog had despaired mom from the night they came home from Montana and wouldn’t let her back in bed after a trip to the bathroom. Dad would have to shut them up every time she needed to go. My mothers brother Frazier dispatched Lindy a couple years later after he bit my oldest sister on the forehead because she was crawling on her hands and knees under the card table during a Peanucle game. 

I remember the stories of the depression during the 1930’s and both of them not being paid for the work they did at times. They even cleaned a former chicken coop and moved my sisters and themselves into. My mothers attitude was always make the best of what you have. When I was young she often said, our linoleum may have holes in it but you can eat from it. Never a more loving mother and family have I known. From all the stories and family get together’s she spoke to me of none more impressive to me than the Christmas of 1941. The Japanese had cheap shotted us at Pearl Harbor and killed over 2,700 of our men and women. All American boys and girls stood up and said “you’ll pay for that”. 18 to 21 year old boys crawled into bombers, fighters, tanks and ships. The women proceeded to build the Fighters, Bombers, Tanks, Ships and Guns, that our boys needed to stop them with. Yes the “Greatest Generation” saved the world. 

My mom and dad had been left without a home or jobs because the orchard and packing shed had been lost in 1939 to the Great Depression. With the help of family and friends mom and dad were given the opportunity to take over management of the Alps. You know the candy store up Tumwater canyon. Dad went to work for Peshastin Lumber and Box logging the Little Wenatchee and White River. While pregnant with me, my mother took the job of cooking meals for family and patrons, buying and selling groceries, renting cabins and boats, selling gasoline, not to mention the laundry, while raising two girls and a boy. She never used the term “I’ve had enough” to my knowledge.

Some of the stories from that time were of our German Police Dog “Fritz” saving our brother from a Rattle Snake in the woodshed. Mom looked out the window one day to see my sister’s and brother in one of the rowboats dangerously close to going over the dam, “she told me she used a switch on all three of them”. Another story of a world famous photographer renting a cabin and the next day a rowboat to cross over and hike up river to the mouth of Dreary Falls. His goal was to get pictures of the falls from the bottom up. She said he returned less than two hours later and had been turned back by Rattlesnakes. Dad and uncle Dale James had to take the 300 gallon barrel to Everett each time it was low to replenish the gasoline for sale. Working day and night was dangerous and necessary. A lot of our family were not actually related but were so close we called them Aunt and Uncle, Dale and Vida James were my aunt and uncle and always will be, however not blood related. God bless them all as without support from everybody in those days would have made life unbearable I’m sure for my mother. 

That particular Christmas in 1941 had left dad to help mom at the Alps. He had been laid off from logging when the snows hit and it left them with ability to keep up with the demands of the business but almost “0” income. The monies brought in by the store were barely enough to make ends meet. My mother could not let her kids go through Christmas without some dreamed of gift. They made the money go as far as they could. The power man came two days before Christmas and apolgeticaly cut the power service. It was his job and no matter they could not blame him. 

In later years mom often talked about the power company which was Puget Sound Power and Light in those days, giving them days to pay the power bill. It became an impossible obligation which made the final shut off unbearable. They had both worked their fingers to the bone so to speak but the least possible was the power bill. They could have gotten by with the Karosene lanterns and wood heat but their kids deserved better. She told me of her and dad mulling the possibilities and not wanting to go to relatives, decided on a course of action. Knowing the power employees had Christmas Eve off dad took a ladder out to the power pole and with my oldest sister holding the flashlight he climbed to the top of the ladder and then wrapped his arms and legs tightly around the pole. He slowly pulled himself up the pole until he could reach the severed wires. Knowing a short would knock him off the pole and probably kill him  he slowly rehooked the wires. Mom told me of the kids crying that he would surely die.

The Christmas of 1941 will always be my favorite. I was born the next April.

PS - I was five years younger than my closest sibling and spent about five years with mom and dad without the other kids. The repeated story of that Christmas in 1941helped me reason that Sacrifice is the most important function and my mom and dad were always there to sacrifice for us.      

To this day when I think of the Alps I vision coming around the corner at Tumwater dam in a snowstorm and seeing the light on in the main floor window of the old original building. Looking through a snowstorm from the dam while traveling westbound in a car with the wipers going gives me a very warm feeling. Merry Christmas to all. -- Frazier

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