Ralph Ernst's Memories of Liberty Lake and Seattle.

In 1991, my first daughter, Delaney was born. My mother Judith, was very keen on family history, and suggested that I collect memories from the older people in the family while I could, so I asked my grandfather, Ralph Ernst, to talk into a tape recorder about some of his life experiences. I suggested that he talk about his job experience.  He made this tape in 1993, and I admit that I listened to it once, with the feeling of, "Oh, that's just grandpa." I threw the tape in a drawer for twenty years, and by the time I took notice of it again, I realized that I did not have a device in the house with which to listen to it. Thanks to my friend Bill for transferring it to digital format. My grandfather died in 2000, and my grandmother died in 2011.  The same year as my mother, Judith. I'm glad to have this now, and there is so much more I would want to ask.  (Oh, and I thought that transcribing this would take a few hours. It took over three weeks, and I just have to add; transcription is hard). I do not have any photos of the Dreamwood Resort, and could not find any online, so, if there are any out there, I would love to see them.

Ralph Marion Ernst, Seattle 1997

Katrina, Delaney Phillips and Fanny May 1997

Today is October 13, 1993. Your great-grandpa Ralph, and your great-grandma  Fanny May, are sending you this tape from Seattle, Washington. I, your grandpa, your great-grandpa am 82 years and one month older than you are, Delaney. You’re a dear little girl, and we wanted to share some our experiences throughout our life, that you might want to listen to some time, when you’re a little older and understand.

My life started out back  in a two-room cottage in eastern Washington. It is actually about two miles off of the Coeur d’Alene Highway from Spokane to Coeur d’Alene, the city of Coeur d’Alene, at a place called Liberty Lake.

Ralph Ernst 7months old.

My Grandpa [Eugene Elmer Ernst] had a summer home there, a resort, it was actually a resort with a number of cabins and in the summertime he would have customers come out, from Spokane and various parts of the state, to spend time fishing on the lake or swimming or boating. http://libertylakesplash.com/news.asp?id=20498

Ralph at center in front in light suit. Bessie in black suit with hat. Liberty Lake, about 1915

So my dad built a house up in some property probably quarter mile from the lake, up on a hill, there was a big hill up behind the house. And my dad and my mother Bessie Ernst, my dad’s name was Glen Forest Ernst, they built this house, and this house was a front room and a kitchen, a porch, there was a porch facing the lake. And anyway, That ís where I was born 82 years ago. 1911. While we were there, my grandpa, Grandpa Rosecrans Gray and his wife, Fanny, would come out and visit me, maybe when we had a rabbit hunt, on Easter,  Easter egg hunt, and grandpa and my dad would go out, outside and hide these eggs and I was supposed to go hunt them.

"Grandpa" Rosecrans Gray, and Fanny. Spokane, WA

I didn’t have any brothers or sisters, so I was kind of a lonely little lad out there in this area. And my grandpa and grandma Ernst had this resort on the beach.  They were the only ones real nearby although I had some cousins further up in the hills. I had some cousins up there and they would come down sometimes.  I had an aunt, my grandma’s sister. Her name was Mary and her husband’s name was Howard, and they were a stone’s throw away from my house, that my dad built there. Mary and Howard White.

Bessie and Coin sitting, standing Mary, Hazel, Glen Forest, Leonora, Eugene, Iva, Ed and Howard 

On some summer days, why,  my mother would let me go with my great aunt to the store at Wicomico Beach. Which, was probably a mile and a half to the little area where they had a store. They also had the train station. There was a train that came out,  a rail-car train that came out from Spokane,  and turned around at Wicomico Beach at liberty lake, and there was a water tank there, and there was some summer cottages, and they had a dance pavilion, and they had this grocery store, and that’s where we went to get our groceries. So I would walk down there with my great aunt Mary, I would just call her Aunt Mary for short, and I remember those trips we made down this crooked little road from our place down to Wicomico Beach. As it was called. And we would go to this grocery store and pick up some things and walk back. One thing I remember out there at our place on Liberty Lake, they called that place Dreamwood. My grandpa [Ernst] had a big stone house there, on the edge of the beach. He had a pump house, and he had an ice house, and a dozen little cabins. That he rented out in the summertime. And I remember sitting in our kitchen window, and I must have been all of 3 or 4 years old. And looking in the wintertime and looking down at the lake which we could see quite readily from our kitchen window, and my dad, and my uncle Coin, and my grandfather Ernst, down on the ice, with grandpas sled and horses. And they would saw the blocks of ice out of the lake, and they would use those ice tongs to lift those blocks of ice onto the sleigh. To bring up to the ice house to be put in sawdust, for the customers that my grandpa had for his cottages in the summer. That ice would last for a long time in that ice house that had real thick walls, and was well insulated. That’s the way he got by down there. He had an orchard, between our house and his house. And I remember that before my grandpa built the big stone house, he had a home, fairly close to where we lived, that caught fire one night. He didn’t have the chinks in the chimney tight enough, and the fire in his fireplace, they went to bed, and the fire, the heat in the fireplace came out through these little holes, in his chimney, and it went into his attic and caught his house on fire, and I remember there was a lot of shuffling of feet around there that time of night, trying to get this fire out. But of course there was no fire department or anything like that there, and the house burnt clear to the ground. My grandpa and grandma were lucky to get out of there, with their lives. That’s just one thing I remember. My grandpa and grandma, They had a dog, by the name of old Spot. He was a coach dog, a dalmatian. He was a white dog with black spots, or it was a black spots with white spots. You can call it anyway you want, Delaney. But anyway, he was a friendly old pooch. I’ve always loved animals I always loved dogs, and heck, I was playing with the bugs around there. Id pick up caterpillars and bring them in the house, and my mother would shoo me right outside again. but I petted him one day, and I was standing along side of him, and imagine how tall I was because an average dog is maybe 16, 18 inches tall, and so the dog lifted his head to acknowledge my hugging him, and his muzzle  hit my jaw, and knockd out a tooth. I remember that quite well.

My grandpa had a big old car, gosh I think it was a Chandler, I think it was a Chandler 8 or a Chandler 6. It had a  flapping side curtain and a canvas top. My grandpa wasn’t too much of a hand to drive that car. He wasn’t too much of a chauffeur. But my uncle, who was around there quite a bit, uncle Coin, he drove the car and drove the old folks around in this great big Chandler car, and I remember it had wheels on it as tall as I was. Those days, I imagine that car was 1912-13, 1913 probably. It probably would hold about five passengers. It was a huge huge machine. Made lots of noise, threw dust all over everything. In the wintertime some of my cousins and I and some of the older folks would go down and the older folks would skate on the ice, and us kids would take our sleds down there, we’d get on our sleds and hold our coats out, and the north wind blowing down across that lake would blow us along at a pretty good rate. We’d just sit on the sled and wed have these wool coats, we’d just hold them out and the wind would blow us down lake wed probably go five or six miles an hour. Pretty good clip, you know. And my uncle Coin, he was a daredevil. He had what was called an iceboat. It was 25 feet long, large triangular sale, and on the stick on the part that came back, that had the one runner on it with the tiller, it had a seat, where one could sit and steer  this iceboat. So I remember this one afternoon, my uncle was sailing that iceboat around the lake. The lake was about a mile and a half long, and he could make down there in just a few minutes, and he’d tack and come back and that boat would go - oh I asked him later on how fast that boat would go and he said it would go 75 mph, with a fairly brisk wind sweeping down from the north, there.  And I had a ride in that ice boat. My uncle would hold me in front of him put his arms around me and hold me in that seat, and we’d take off in that ice boat, and I’m telling you, things would happen real fast, in that ice boat. And we weren’t that far off of the ice, and it made it look like we were going three or four hundred miles an hour. We just had a great time sailing over that lake going 75 mph. And those are some of the things I reminisce about.

We would get visits from my Mom’s sister and her family, who lived in Spokane, out on a farm by Valley Ford not awfully too far away from our place. And my dad and my uncle Joe, that was my aunt Nelly’s that’s my mothers sisters husband, my dad and my uncle Joe were working together as carpenters to build some farm buildings, some barns and out-buildings, one thing or another out in the countryside out there, they made some money that way. And they would come and visit us, and they had a couple of daughters. They called us the three musketeers. There was Dorothy and Margaret, and myself, and Dorothy was the oldest, and Margaret was younger than I.

Ralph's cousins, Dorothy Wirtner, Irene English, Margaret Wirtner

I was in the middle. And it was enjoyable to have my cousins come and visit. And I had cousins up on the hill as well. And when I say the hill, I mean the hill behind our place, that continued east toward Idaho. If we went up on the hill we could see Idaho from our area there. In the wintertime we could hear wolves, coyotes, mountain lions crying up on the hill, and one Winter my dad shot, I think, a six-horned buck up on the hill there, a deer,  for us, for meat. I remember the deer, and having him drag it down. I think he borrowed one of grandpa’s horses, because he couldn’t lift it. But anyway that was just one thing I remember.

We had chickens out there. Grandpa Glen Forest Ernst, your Grandpa’s namesake, by the way, Delaney. Grandpa Glen Forest Ernst was my father. He had barred rock chickens. He took some ribbons at the fair with them. He was good with chickens. He had a chicken house and a chicken yard, where we lived out there, Liberty Lake,  and we had some big sunflowers out there, too. I don’t know why I did, but when I went out there by the chicken yard, why, I’d point my finger at the chickens, like I had a gun, and I’d say, “Tuck! Tuck!” and my folks would get a big kick out of that. Another thing I would say when I was little, was that when I had to go to the bathroom, I’d call it the kicker room. Don’t ask me why, but I suppose that was how it hit me when I heard the older folks talking about the bathroom. One time I was out there by the chicken house, probably on my way back from my aunt Mary White’s house, which was the same direction, we had a big old stump, probably 25 or 30 feet from the back door of the house, and it was infested with red ants. So I don’t know why I suppose I got tired of walking, so I sat up there on that stump and was talking to the chickens, and those ants infiltrated my clothes, and it seemed like, with one signal from one of the ants why, they started biting. Me at once. And boy I’ll  tell you I was busiest little guy you ever saw.  I ran into the house yelling! My mother didn’t know what was wrong with me. I was grabbing everything that was hanging loose, and yelling “It hurts, it hurts, it hurts!” And she finally noticed I was infested with red ants, so she got my clothes off of me, and I think she used kerosene. She used kerosene for a lot of things those days, since we had kerosene lamps, we didn’t have electricity out there, and she got me dowsed down with kerosene and of course we got rid of those red ants but I had a lot of welts on me for a long time, I remember that!

I remember I was just a little tike, maybe I wasn’t even a year old, My mom was working in the garden, I was crawling on the bannister next to the steps  and promptly fell off. I banged my head on the stake in the ground. I really gouged a hole in my forehead, just above my left eye. Had it been just two inches down it would have knocked my eye out. This place wasn’t too far away from  where one afternoon I was out there, near the chicken house. Mom was feeding the chickens, I was playing around out front of the house. All of a sudden my mother spotted a coiled rattle snake, not too far from where I stood, and she told me to stand still. She had the hoe out there, and she chopped that rattle snake up into a few pieces. That was a pretty close call for yours truly.

I remember another incident at Liberty Lake, in the house. My mom was washing clothes one day, and she was wringing out some clothes, with a hand wringer, and I was fascinated with the gears that were at the other end of the wringer and how they meshed and everything, and stuck my right hand up there, and stuck my fingers right into those gears. I let out a war whoop! Mom she didn’t know - she was startled, and she turned  and wrung my fingers out the way they went in, so I got a double whammy on that one.

My father had about a 25 foot launch he called the Mermaid and he docked it in front of Grandpa’s dock on the lake. And when people would come out on the weekend, either to Grandpa’s resort cottages, or some Pavilions across the lake or houses across the lake, summer homes, the people would come out to Wicomico there where the train turned around and get off at Neyland’s Pavilion, and my dad would be there with the launch, and he would take them, in the Mermaid and charge them so much, and transport them to their destination. And this launch had a one-cylinder engine, mostly in the stern of the ship. And my mother would hold me, in the launch, I think there are some pictures around here, mom holding me in that Mermaid launch, and I’d look over there, and I’d see that flywheel going around and I’d say,”Look at the wheel go! Look at the wheel go!” that was one of the things, one of my sayings, when I was practically a baby, that my grandpa  Gray was intrigued by. He was a mechanic, a very good mechanic working with watches. He was a jeweler and watch maker, all his life. And he told my dad and mother that he thought that I would be a mechanic when I grew up, because of how intrigued I was with machinery and anything that rolled around. I’d take my two-wheeled cart sometimes and dump it over with the wheels up in the air, and I’d make those wheels turn and spin, and I’d say, “Look at the wheel go, look at the wheel go!” So that is another thing that happened 80 some years ago.

My mother and I would often sit at the kitchen table, out there at Liberty Lake in the dark, we had those kerosene lights, waiting for my Dad to come home. He was working in Spokane, those days, and he used to drive his old Chevrolet Touring car, home from Spokane, out through the valley, the east valley out there. As he came round the different bends in the road, out there at Liberty Lake, Mom and I could see his lights, from his car, blink on and off, as he came around the corner, they’d shine, and then they’d be down in a gully, or something like that, and we wouldn’t see the lights for a while and then they’d pop up again, we had a regular snaky road, around the lake out there, so his lights were coming and going down around Wicomico Beach there. So we would watch for dad, when he came home in the car.

When I was six years old, this was 1917, why my dad decided that he didn’t want me to go to school, out there in the little red brick school house at the west end of the lake. He didn’t want me to go there cause I guess he figured I wasn’t going to get as good a schooling as I would in the public schools in Spokane. So we packed up our belongings, and went into Spokane, to live and we rented a house up there in North Monroe, and I went to Audubon  grade school, for my first year in school, and I guess it was about fifteen or twenty kids in the class, so it got along okay, and we stayed around there, and my dad worked there for, I think the man’s name was Ballard, in an architecture office, there in the Spokesman Review building, over on Riverside. And we were there in this little rented house for a year, and in 1918, we went to Spokane, and dad drove his 1915 Chevrolet touring car to Seattle and we went down by the Columbia river. On the way home I remember, and we camped out at night. Those days the main highway was just a couple of ruts in the road, that was the main drag. That just shows you what happened from then to this day. That was the main drag along there, and just a couple ruts in the road and the grass grew up between them. And we’d pull off the road along by the river at night, and we’d camp. One night there, I got up in the morning, an my dad, he picked up my  blankets, he was going to stow them away in the car and the blankets had a scorpion in it! I’d slept all night with a scorpion! which, when they sting you, why  it’s a pretty serious thing. When we got to Seattle we stayed with an old school chum of my dad’s. His name was Roy Haines and his wife’s name was May and we stayed at their place at Sunnyside, between 47th and 50th at Sunnyside at their place, for a number of weeks until we could find a place to rent.

Roy Haines and Glen Forest Ernst 1905

WWI was on then, and houses were awfully scarce to rent or buy or anything else around here, because of the shipyards. We had the Skinner and Eddy Shipyard down on the waterfront, which later became Hooverville which was well known broadcast around, but the Skinner and Eddy ship yard, my dad and mother and I would drive down, and we’d watch these fellows at four-thirty in the afternoon getting off from work, and they would storm across Railroad Avenue down there with their lunch pails scattering all around like a bunch of ants. Some of them were heading for the street car to go home, some of them had their cars parked down there. In those days there were very few automobiles, I can tell you that.  And so that was an interesting sight to see. That shipyard burned down later so then they made, during the depression years, during WWII, why a lot of the homeless people built shacks in there and they called it Hooverville, that was on the waterfront, there. Another thing, when we came to Seattle, we saw a lot of the Indian people, Native Americans, and the ladies would sit along the waterfront there, selling their baskets, leather ware, beaded purse, beaded moccasins, and jackets, and gauntlet gloves, and all kinds of things like that. And they came from over on Bainbridge Island, where they had homes over there. They’d come across on canoes, and they’d have a place to tie up there on the waterfront, and they’d come up there in the mornings, and they’d be there all day selling their wares and doing their beadwork. And it was very very interesting. Now anymore you don’t see anything like that. That was years ago. It doesn’t seem like years ago, it seems to me like it was yesterday.

So after a while, we found a place that we could rent. It was a big tall three-story building an old building apartment house. Well actually it was a big house, and they just rented rooms. So we got half of the third floor. The other half there was a Scandinavian man that lived in the other half. He was an old logger lived up there I guess. So we stayed up there, and rented there. And that was the Snell’s house, and my dad built a house up the street on 9th Ave NE and 43rd, between  43rd and 45th on 9th.

905 E. 45th Street, Seattle, WA The Muriel Apts. Built and owned by Glen  F. Ernst

We moved in that for a while, then he sold that house, and then we rented again, up the street at the other end of the block, we rented from a man named Crimm. We were on the 2nd floor there. But airplanes, being so few and far between they would fly over our house, coasting down and lighting on lake union, because from both the houses being up high, there was nothing  in the way and we could see those planes, gliding on their glide path down to the lake, and landing on the lake, but in those days those airplanes were few and far between. The war was still on, and these were just kind of flimsy airplanes like they had those days.  They had pontoons on them, and they would land on the lake. Well anyway  I went to the Latona grade school there, went to the 2nd grade. The Latona grade school was about 8 blocks Southwest from that house that we were renting there on 9th and 45th.

Fanny Gray, Ralph Ernst and Bessie Ernst on the Crimm's porch 

Those days I got acquainted with the neighborhood kids. Among others we used to play run-sheep-run and one thing another, after supper at night, until it was time to come in, our folks would call us.It would be dark and we would go in. But we’d play those different games where we’d run an hide, and all that stuff that kids do when they’re that age. And kids that I ran around with, including Bill Bretts, my old buddy, whom we’re still buddies to this day, He lives out North of here. Bill and his brothers. There’s Johnny, well Bertha was the youngest and she was out of our class, she was the baby of the family, and then there was Johnny, and then Ed who was a year younger than I am, and then Bill was a year older than I am,  and then  Wally and then Lillian she was the oldest. Anyway bill and I we were the closest in age, so we used to run around quite a bit, and then the Selliges , there was Harold, he was about our age, I think he was a year older than I, and Kenny his brother, and then there was Frank the oldest fella, and we ran around with them too sometimes. They had cars. I didn’t get my car until about 1925 I guess. I had a 1925 Ford Coupe. That was my first automobile. But all of us kids would run around together, we’d go swimming at the Palisades in the summertime, and I fell off a diving tower smack on my back and it’s a wonder I didn’t break some bones. I guess I was too tough for that. And then in the Wintertime we’d go ice skating over there. At lake Washington, there was kind of a cove in there, they called the Palisades, and us guys used to go ice skating there. We even ice skated on green lake which is practically right in the middle of University district, here, in Seattle. Then after a few years, I went up to University Heights grade school,  and from there I went to Roosevelt High school, where our boys,(mine and Fanny May’s) they graduated from Roosevelt High school. And I graduated from there in 1930. So.  So much for that.

Ralph 1930

After that, I went to work. I didn’t go to college, but I did go to work, for an iron works, on the south part of town. It was run by a family affair. It was called reliance iron and wire works. And we made ornamental fence, and we wove wire for the immigration station for the panels that went in the windows there. Later on, and we worked on elevators somewhat at night.  I worked with the mechanic, who worked on the elevators, on top of the cars, and I wanted to learn to weld, but the welder in this little shop, we only had six or eight guys working in this shop, the welder, he wouldn’t show me how to weld. So  I went to the foreman, he was the son of the owner, I went to the foreman, and asked him if I could learn to weld on the welding machine if I stayed after work at night and closed and lock the doors, if I could stay and practice on the welding machine, and he allowed me to do this. And since the welder wouldn’t help me, why  I taught myself how to weld, with this Lincoln welder,  and one night I was welding away, puttering away, and the boss’s brother came in with a truck load of steel rods, that had blacksmith’s eyes on the end, but they eyes weren’t fastened together so they would be strong so he asked me if I would weld the eye on these rods, together, to make a complete loop. And I said sure, I’ll try. I don’t know if I can do it or not, but I’ve been practicing here a while, I think I can do that job for you. So I went ahead and did that for Paul. Their name was Herz, the whole family, and I did that for him, and he went merrily on his way with his flat bed truck, and the next morning, why, the foreman came to me, says, “Hey, my boy came in with some rods last night and you helped him out, and welded them up for him.” And I said, “Well I hope he was satisfied with them.” And he said, “He sure was, and when there is an opening for a welder in this shop, you can have the job.” And I was real elated about that, because you see I was only making about 35 cents an hour. And about maybe 15 dollars a week those days for the kind of work I was doing, was pretty good, for being a helper. A Mechanic was making 30 dollars a week. I was working with an old German blacksmith. I was a helper for a German blacksmith in the shop there, about this time.  He had been a lieutenant in WWI for the German Army, and he was a tough old bird. He would have his coat hanging over on the post in the blacksmith shop, and every once in a while, he’d go over there, and he’d grab that bottle that he had in his coat, and take a big swig of moonshine whiskey, and then he’d come over to the anvil where I was ready to work with him, and he’d say, “Hit it! Hit it!” and since I was swinging a twenty-pound sledge in those days, and eating five sandwiches for lunch, why I would smash some of his flatties, and his fullers and some of the other things that go with the blacksmithing.

Well, when Bill Bolt  left, and he got into that row with Fred Herz why, for a little while there Fred put me on as a blacksmith. I had to sharpen jackhammer drills for the [J.T.] Hardeman Hat Company job. They used the pneumatic drills down there to cut the cement off of the Hardeman Hat company thirty-five feet when they put in Aurora Avenue which runs right through town here. So, I did some of their blacksmith work for them, then they finally hired a blacksmith to take my place, when Fred the welder quit, he went down to Los Angeles and helped his brother down there in the garage business, so then I was scheduled to be the welder then, so I left the blacksmithing to someone else,  and so I went as welder. I didn’t have to be swinging a lot of heavy hammers. This date was probably 1931 or 32.

Ralph 1936 at 4532 7th N.E., Seattle, 1933 Olds Sedan

So I was a welder for them, for about three years after that, I guess. I think I finally left their employ about 1935. I had a chance to work for Wippenback [Spelling?] Sheet Metal Company building beer barrels for Pilsner and Hemrich. We had about 60,000, beer barrels to build and I and other men, did the welding on them. They were metal barrels,  glass-lined with wooden staves on the outside. They made quite a barrel alright. Then I worked for Isaacson Ironworks just west of that shop, over by the east water way. So I went to work for Isaacson Ironworks, and we were building machinery for the Coulee Dam. The Coulee Dam in eastern Washington on the Columbia river, they used carry scrapers over there where they could pick up 25 yards of dirt at one clip, it had great big tires on the motors. And also bulldozers, road rippers, and rollers, to roll out like on highways, and all that kind of gear, we we remaking. It was happy welding, but I increased my wages quite a bit from when I was working for the Herz company where I was making 35 cents an hour, I was making a dollar and a half an hour. Those days that was a good mechanic’s pay!

About this time in my life, radio was pretty well advanced. TV was talked about, and was making rapid strides. The telephone the crank telephone, had mostly gone by the board except for some of the remote farm areas in the country. The old magneto crank phone I believe my bride here, can tell you more about some of those crank phones that they used to have and some of the incidents that used to happen. Now of course, the big deal is computers. TV is kind of old hat, anymore. I guess we’ll always have TV.  I have a radio here, sitting on my bookshelf that’s 1914 Crosley. It’s got 2 tubes in it. And at the time that that was made it was a pretty fancy piece of gear. But it’s an infant in radio. I mean you look at the overall spectrum. But it’ll still work.  I could make it work if I want to just put batteries to it. It has to have batteries. So it is an antique. A 1914 Crosley and it was it just had earphones, it had no speakers. In the early days of radio, when they had crystal sets. My grandpa Gray had a little crystal set, and he’d set it on the card table in his front room, and he and grandma Gray would have earphones, and they’d listen to this little crystal set. The crystal set was about three inches cubed, three inches each way, and the earphones that they used were almost twice as large, as the crystal set. He had to hunt a real sensitive spot with what they called a cat whisker, and it had a little piece of galena rock, to get the music through, or whatever was being broadcast. So grandpa used to listen to that radio. He’d read the newspaper first in the evening when he got home from work. And then he and grandma, while she was doing her needlework, the two of them would be listening to that crystal set radio. And I can remember that so well, when I would visit them, after we had moved to Seattle. My folks would send me over on the train, and my grandparents would meet me there.  I’d spend the time with them. My grandpa would go to work in the morning, he’d walk down Monroe Street, walk to work, get his exercise, and then he’d sit at his bench, repairing watches and clocks. And then in the afternoon, my grandma would go down to the town, in their Model T Ford sedan. She drove the sedan, and grandpa, he rode. Hanging on to everything he could find so that he wouldn’t be swinging out of the thing when she drove it up Monroe Street. I can see that, derby hat, flowing mustache, celluloid collar, swallowtail coat, grandpa hanging on to anything that was hanging loose, on the inside of that Model T Ford. And grandma, with one eye on the road and the other eye on the wheel, with grim determination, with her gloved hand, and her voile dress, and her mutton-leg sleeves, and her hat with a great big pheasant feather on the top of it, or her peacock feather, and here she was glowering and looking straight ahead, and the motor was roaring. And away we went! Those were the days. Those were the days, Delaney. So she’d, grandma would take me downtown, and I’d go to a show while she would go to a card party or something. She had something to do that she wanted to do. So I would go to the show there, and the show house was right next to where my grandpa was working for Ben Cohen Brothers there on Riverside. And he sat there in the window in their place, and worked on watches and rings and things like that. Clocks and that. So when I came out of the show, why I’d come in there and sit there with him and learn the watch making business. So, when grandpa would get ready to go home, grandma would be sitting out at the curb in the Model T Ford sedan, would you believe a nineteen-twenty-four model probably, or maybe twenty-three. Round glass windows in the back and square windows on the side. Nevertheless, we had windows. Most of the cars my dad ever had, until after I had left home, were flapping side curtains, with isinglass in the curtains. Pretty drafty I tell you those days. Especially in the wintertime.  Well after we got out to the curb, my grandma would crank up the tin lizzie, she used to call it the tin lizzie, and head for 1016 North Monroe, up Monroe street hill. And she could certainly make that little old tin lizzie fly. And then we’d get up to their house, sham [?] would have some supper ready for us, in short order, and we would just spend the evening up there quietly, grandpa listening to his crystal set, and grandma doing her needle work, and I’d probably be reading a book or something. So that’s the way it was in those days.

I’m going to let Grandma say her few words, or more if possible. Grandma Fanny May. [Fanny May McCormick Ernst, speaking]

Ralph and Fanny May wedding, 1944

Tuesday October 26, 1993. Hello, Dear Great-granddaughter, Delaney Sage Phillips. We just had breakfast of  cooked oatmeal with raisons and banana with milk on top. The sun is shining and there are several ferries traveling in and out of Seattle on Elliot bay. It really is nice to see, and someday hopefully,  you will come for a visit. In Seattle. A lot of people here, love you dear. I, Fanny May, came from the midwest state of Iowa north of Oklahoma, where your grandma Judy Sumner Ernst was born and raised. I grew up in a farm area, in a small town while attending high school near Des Moines Iowa. I helped my aunt and uncle Rev. Fred Sawyer, with their five small children. Up until I was 14 I lived with my dad and mother and two brothers on a small farm near Urbana, Iowa. We milked cows, had chickens pigs on eighty-four acres. Our horses did the work that tractors now do. I’ll tell you about the windmill experience: forty-foot windmill I used to climb when the folks had gone to town. You know, they didn’t want me up there so dad boarded it up so I couldn’t climb it. But it was fun ‘cause it was all level and I could see for miles. And also I had a cousin Viva who was a joy in my life. She would do a lot of things that I was afraid to do, but I loved to see her do them. For one thing she whistled over the country phone line and by the time the folks got to town, it was all over Urbana that we were playing with the telephone. Viva could really whistle, so I imagine the switchboard really lit up, when she whistled. There was no electricity so we used kerosene for lights. We went out to an outhouse to  the toilet. We had a party line, so  when you rang the phone, various ones on the line would take down the receiver to enjoy what was being talked about.

I met and married your  dear great-grandpa Ralph Ernst in 1944. Yes, next year we will have our 50th anniversary September 2, 1994. Your grandpa Glen Ernst was about one year and eight months old. A very precious little dear, and now he’s a big dear, with a dear wife your grandma, Judy Ernst. All my love, always your grandma, your great-grandma, Fanny May Ernst. Bye.

Fanny May Ernst 1997

This is great-grandpa Ralph again, Delaney. Well anyway, I worked for Herz iron work, then making the beer barrels, then I went over, short ways over to the west, there, worked for Isaacson Ironworks. I worked with a lot of Scandinavians there, a lot of Swedes and Norwegians.  And I got so that I could almost imitate their brogue, because I worked for them for about eight years. Their talk and brogue would go something like this. [Grandpa imitating Swedish accents]. I would be getting on there now, where they were making these bulldozers. And I would crank up my welding machine and Ollie said, “Now come on over here, and we’re going to put this thing together.” So he’d say, “Is the welding machine working okay?” And I’d say, “Yes Ollie it is working real good.” He’d say, “You put on a schmear there a little bit, and it’s still warm there and I’ll hit it with the hammer.” So I say, “Okay Ollie that’s fine. So I’ll just weld along here then I’ll just break the arc and you take some sledge hammer and hit it down, and that will make it a good, tight joint.” So he says, “Okay Ralph, I’m going to go at it. so anyway i’d put that bead on there and it would be red hot, and he would come down with that hammer, and boy would he hit it real hard. “That’s just great. That’s the way I like to do it.”

Shortly after I worked at Isaacson Ironworks, I went to work for Washington Iron works, not too far away, and was welding on gold drudges for Alaska up on the Powell River making the big pontoons and the ladder, and the ladder ways and upper machinery platforms. I worked for them for about eight years, and then I went to work on the railroad. I was firing on the switch engines on an eight hour shift. I was working at night and I would hand shovel six tons of coal on a shift with a number three scoop. I’d get down to the round house, and I’d be there before the engineer got there, and I’d climb up into the cab the hostlers had the engines sitting out on the waiting rails, there in front of  the round house, and I’d turn on the lights and I’d turn on the lubricator, and I’d oil the bell and light the lanterns, the riding light lanterns were kerosene at that time. Blue and green light that we had sitting on top of the coal tender. And I’d start the air pump and it would go, [rhythmic noise], and it would really sound like it was standing there doing something. And then after a while the engineer would come out, after writing out his report, he would come out  of the shack, and get on board the engine and get his oil can. And he’d oil the running gear. He’d run oil the axles and the wheels and the slide guides and all the rest of it. And then we’d be ready to go when the track foreman, conductor really, is what we called him in his group, and we’d move out and they’d ride the engine out to where we were going to switch cars for the night, out in the yard. So we worked out in the yard.  Later on I went on the road engine, from Seattle on the Yakima run, on the big Timkin the big 1016 pacific type engine.  I got  a lot of experience there. We had a simplex bolster. And the steam jets would blow the coal off of the horseshoe foundation into the firebox, which was a very intricate and interesting  operation. They had a little engine in the tender which turned a worm screw that brought the coal up to the elevator which raised it up and got it up to the level of the fire box. Then there were five steam jets that would blow that coal off of that horseshoe-shaped platform and blow that coal into the fire box at the different corners, and down the center.  That would be by steam jet. And that little engine that was in the tender that I just told you about was two cylinders in it and it would run off the steam of the boiler. On the way to Yakima why it would be a lot of twist and turns in the mountains, and the boards, that’s the switch boards, signal boards that you have probably seen along the railroad tracks, at times,  different colors and in the night they have lanterns so you can see those colors. And there’s a lot of places  where the engineer couldn’t see those colors, if it was red we really had to stop, and if it was amber we had to slow down to about thirty miles an hour. So, anyway, I had to take note where these boards were, when I took my instructive runs over there. And I’d have to call those boards to the engineer, and he’d call them back, make sure we got ‘em right. And then when we got to Yakima, why I’d dead head it home, back to Seattle. And I’d go out 9:30 the next night around the King Street station, at the second section of number two. That was the route that I had, and after I got through working for the railroad, they wanted to put me, anyway, they wanted to put me up in Vancouver, BC, or taking that rat run up to the border, and working up in that area why, I’d have to move, and I didn’t want to move so I quit that job. I didn’t have the seniority to stay here, because they would bump me off of the job. So anyway, that’s some of the experiences I’ve had in working. I worked a number of places after I left the railroad. I can’t remember all the little details of my past history nor probably bore you to death listening to it.    So anyway here we are. Grandma and I in our later years here in Seattle. We get our exercise, we do our eating, we do our sleeping, and that’s about it. We go to church. We do a little church work. I cut stamps for the food bank for the University Christian Church, to get money to feed the homeless over there. Grandma does her stint by working in the workshop there, and making layettes  and little caps and sweaters and things for these little newborn babies that come into the world. So here we are, and there you are. So I think we’ll just call this quits for a while, and send this to you. And then if there’s any questions that you might want to ask, I can always answer them, that is, if I’m still around.  So with that, Delaney, I think we’ll say adios, farewell, and goodbye for this time. We love you always, you and mama and daddy. So bye bye for now.

Introducing Bessie Muriel Gray Ernst 1888-1974

Photo by Ray Ernst

This is my great-grandmother, Bessie Muriel Gray Ernst. When I knew her, she was nearly blind, and I would "help" her walk up the stairs. She made me count them, so I would learn. She was very patient and sweet, and would defend my "piano playing" to my grumpy grandfather. She would invite me up to her room to try perfume samples, and she would show me the students that walked through the University District in Seattle, and say, "Stay away from those hippies!" 

It was 1969. I was four. My father was in Vietnam, and my mother lived close to my dad's family, in Seattle. Although I remember her as a very sweet, gentile woman, often smiling, always polite, I didn't really know much about her life until I was an adult, and I got a pile of her stuff.

Stuff is a funny thing. You see T.V. shows all about stuff. There are people buried in stuff on hoarding shows. There are people buying matching, expensive stuff on home improvement shows. There are whole shows just selling stuff. As a twelve-year-old, my family's stuff began to trickle down to me. There was so much more of it when I was younger. Much of it seems to have disappeared over the years. I remember doilies, quilts, cameras, baby clothes, bud vases, tools, dolls, cups, photos. So many things, from many branches of my family tree, but most of it, from Bessie. It made me wonder about her. Why was it important that her juice glasses get passed down? Why her bean pot? Her double boiler? Her table cloth? I suppose some of it had to do with the Depression. They all took care of their things, and used them forever. I saw all of these things as a curiosity. I still do, but I also saw them as something of a burden. Some of her things are interesting, and over a hundred years old, but I am sure my little millennial is not going to take them to her new home. Part of me wants to stop keeping the things as if they are precious reminders, and just use them. Part of me, doesn't.

So, I thought I would start a little blog about the things. It might help me to move past them. To record them, so they have less power in my actual life.

Here's a little background. Bessie was born February 26, 1888, in Arborville, Nebraska. She had a sister, Nellie, and her parents were Rosecrans Gray, and Fanny English. The story was that Bessie was born in a mud hut, but there are many photos of her with her family, in very nice attire, so my assumption is that they were not there long. Rosecrans was born in Kentucky into a large family. He worked for railroads, and eventually became a jeweler, repairing clocks. He settled in Spokane, WA with his family, and I found notices in the newspaper about their attendance at various social functions. 

I was told that Bessie was not allowed to play, as a child but was taught to sew, tight, even little stitches, and to keep scrapbooks, and engage in various needlework. She graduated High School in 1908, the same year she married my great-grandfather, Glen Forest Ernst, after a two-year secret engagement. From all accounts no one wanted her to marry him, especially her father. Glen had a temper, and was a work-a-holic. He was a building contractor, designing, building, and then renting and managing buildings all around Spokane and Seattle. The rent from the buildings sustained Bessie for most of her life, after Glen died, in 1954. Glen's Parents had owned Hotels in the area.

From everything I have of hers, Bessie was very traditional, and proper. She actively sought out family history and pictures, in an attempt to record it. I feel it is possible that much of this was lost to time, but I do have photo albums, scrap books, and some letters and greeting cards.

Here is where it begins. I will post my great-grandmother's things, and probably things belonging to other relatives. I'll try to offer what I know, or what I've heard. I think it is unlikely that I have relatives out there that know of these people. Because my Grandfather was an only child, and my father had one biological brother who was mentally challenged, and a brother who was adopted, and then I myself was an only child...the family tree is skinny here. Nevertheless. Here are Bessie's Things. More to come.