Celebrating my Father Who Would Have Been 101 Years Old Today...

James Burton Groves was born on a home- stead near Ryegate, Montana, not far from Billings, MT on October 26, 1913.

His mother, Amanda Sofia Isaacs (originally Isaacson of Norwegian descent) had grown up in Forest City, IA but decided to become a homesteader in MT when she was in her mid twenties.  She met my Grandfather, William Floyd Groves, there as he had gone to MT to work in the harvest.  He had been born and reared on a homestead near North Platte, NE.   

Bill & Amanda's wedding photo - November 28, 1910.

Grandma Amanda had traveled to WI for the birth of their first son, Vernon.  But because there were no complications with that birth, she gave birth to my father in MT.  The family would continue to live in MT for the necessary five years in order to own their homestead.  At the end of five years, they sold their land and the one room house in which they had lived.  They moved to Minneapolis, MN for a short period of time and then to a farm near Viroqua, WI.   My father's life continued in WI until 2006 when at the age of 92, he died.

Christmas at Cross Ridge School...

During the recent holidays, I was asked to share a personal Christmas  tradition or memory with a group gathered for a dinner of fellowship and fun.  When asked, I hesitated only momentarily before I agreed to accept the assignment.  I knew of a memory I had been wanting to write about and this would provide the perfect time and place to share.  

With that story composed, I share it here as well.

Cross Ridge School as it looks now - not much different that it looked in the 1950's when I attended grades 1-8.

My elementary school days were all spent at a one-room country school named Cross Ridge School. 

First Day of Job Hunting...

The story of my summer in Estes Park continues..
I concluded my last "chapter" with these words:

But a new day meant that job search must begin.  Somehow we got dressed and headed back toward town with plans to find a job.  


Our hopes were high...

Our hopes were high.  We were eager to get started as we felt sure there would be a job somewhere in that bustling tourist town.

One of the first things we wanted to do that day, however, was to find the Post Office.  We had not yet any way to inform our parents of our progress so far.  We had not made any calls to them since we left home about a week earlier. 

Mom had told us that she would write to us and send the letter to:  

• Linda & Kathy Groves
• General Delivery  Estes Park, CO
  
  We were very anxious to find the Post Office to see if there was a letter waiting for us there.  We would also explore the possibility of renting a Post Office Box so that we would have an address for those who would write us during the summer.
  
  Note:  I have just taken a break from writing in order to check a box with files I've had in storage for years.  The files contain the letters I wrote home to my parents since the time I left home and started college.  I have never reread these letters though I searched one time to find some information I was needing.
  
  I decided to see if there were my letters home from Estes Park and I am delighted to say that they are in the file and 
  I wrote often and in lengthy detail. 
  
  At some point I will share quotes from these letters but right now it is late and I will conclude with a few items which clarify things I've already shared.
  
  My memory has been very accurate for the most part.  My letters state that my sister and I paid  $.50 / night to stay in the bunkhouse.  Mom Manford was 90 years old and very spry.
  
  We began our job search immediately going in and out of businesses with everyone saying the same thing:  
  

  "We  have all the employees we need right now"

  Some people suggested we return in a few days or told us of another establishment that might need a worker.
  
  I do not know when we received our first letter from home.  I saved those letters also but I have not gotten those located yet.  Mom was very faithful - in writing and in praying.
  
  I will continue this story but I'm not sure how much more I will write this week.  I am leaving for Europe very early Saturday morning so there are things I'm working on this week to be ready for that trip.  I will be traveling with one of my sons, his wife and their 20 month old son as they do a concert tour in Europe.
  
  I hope to be able to blog about our tour.  The Estes Park stories may wait until later.  I'll return to the states on April 17th.
  
  Please leave a comment if you are reading these blogs.  It is fun to know if there's an interest in keeping this story going.
  
  

Meeting Mom Manford...

This story began on 3-8-12
Last paragraph yesterday:

With her name and address, hope in our hearts and the need for a bed for the night, we headed off in the direction of her home on the south east edge of town.

***************************************
I was very grateful for a sister with whom to share my experiences in the summer of 1964.  We were both focused on the same need so there was no argument concerning what we needed to do next.  

Somehow we learned what direction to head in order to find Mom Manford's home.  It seemed people in that community knew who she was.  Fortunately it was a beautiful day so being on foot did not present a problem.

It was probably about 2 miles from the Employment office to Mom Manford's home.  Both my sister and I were used to physical exertion - farm girls?  Plenty of physical labor in our background.  And the University of Wisconsin is built on rolling hills so I had tramped many miles in going to classes over the past year.  Hiking around Estes Park was not daunting.

It was on our way to Mom Manford's home that we passed the little Baptist Church I mentioned earlier.  The sign out front informed us that there were services on Sunday morning and evening and a Thursday evening service.  We made mental note.  We were not Baptists but we knew they were as evangelical as the church in which we had grown up.  I had also attended a Baptist Church part of the time during my year in Madison, WI at the University.

We found Mom Manford's home, knocked on her door and she welcomed us in when we introduced ourselves and let her know how we had been given her name and address.  Her home was humble as was this 89 year old woman.  Getting to know her could wait.  We just needed a place to stay so that was our greatest concern.

With great relief, we were told we were welcome to stay in the bunk house that night.  Someone else was staying in the cottage which had a kitchen area.  The bunk house had just beds and a bath.  But since the Inter-Varsity group from Bear Trap Ranch would be arriving on the 4th of July, we would have to find other housing arrangements by then.  

We had 2 weeks of housing!  That was wonderful!!!  

Since we had left our suitcases at the bus station, we needed to return there to pick those up.  So back to the street to retrieve our bags.  

As we walked through town, we were noticing all the shops, restaurants and businesses which had employees. We began to formulate a game plan for finding jobs for ourselves.  We knew Estes Park was a vacation destination for many so great numbers of college kids were hired for summer employment.  Hopefully we would soon be amongst the employed.  We felt we could earn the most money if we were hired as waitresses so we would seek jobs in a restaurant first.

All was safe with our things back at the bus station!  But since we had packed almost everything we owned, we decided to use taxi service for transport back to Mom Manford's bunk house.  It had already been a long day and we didn't think we could carry our heavy bags back across town.  


We must have gotten something to eat along the way but I have no recollection of where or what we ate that day.


The bunk house was a bit rustic but we didn't mind.  We had a bed and a safe place for the night so we were content.  I don't think Mom Manford required any payment for the use of her housing.  She generously allowed us to be sheltered under her roof.


Life in the mountains was new to us.  We did not realize that nighttime temperatures could be much different from daytime temperatures.  


As we awakened in the morning, we discovered that "winter" had blown in.  The outside temperature was 36 degrees and so was the inside temperature because we discovered a broken window beside our beds and no heat in the bunk house!  Cold wind was blowing across our beds.


But a new day meant that job search must begin.  Somehow we got dressed and headed back toward town with plans to find a job.  


Our hopes were high...
 

June 1964 - Looking for a summer job...

I concluded yesterday's post with these lines:

When we arrived there, we were applicants numbers 95 and 96 to apply for jobs.... that day!!!  


And we were told there were no jobs for any of us!!!
************************************************************
The story continues...

Though it seemed nearly hopeless, we filled out application forms and walked back onto the street.  What good that did I don't really know because we had no way of any prospective employer to locate us.  Of course there were no cell phones and since we didn't have a place of residence yet, we had no contact info.  We must have left the office promising to return often for updates on local job openings.  We were advised by the office personnel that our only way to find a job would be to walk into all local establishments, introduce ourselves and ask if there were any job openings.  Maybe in time there would be something.
Our most pressing need at the moment, however, was to find a place to spend the night and the foreseeable future.  

I can't remember how much money we had between us but it wasn't much - probably about $20.00.

The travel route we had taken to get to Estes Park had taken us by train from near our farm home to Madison, WI.  The passenger train for Madison stops in Columbus, WI where Madison bound passengers get off and board a bus to Madison.  


In Madison, we joined a few Inter-Varsity friends who were driving to Colorado Springs in order to attend a 3- wk conference at Bear Trap Ranch.  That camp grounds is 18 miles (over an hour's drive) into the mountains above the Springs.  


We could have attended that conference but we didn't have the financial means to pay for the cost of it and we assumed it would be wise to get to Estes Park as soon as possible in order to find a job and start making money.  


We arrived at Bear Trap Ranch in the afternoon of probably June 12th or 13th.  We were able to spend the night and get a meal and a ride into town the next morning where we were taken to the Greyhound Bus station.


We had the name of a family who lived in Boulder, CO - outside of Denver.  This family was related to a family we knew quite well in our home church in Winona, MN.  We had been assured that they would welcome us and give us a place to spend an overnight if we needed it.  I can't actually remember if we called ahead to alert them to our planned arrival or if we called them from the Bounder bus station when we arrived there.  However it happened, they did pick us up and took us in for a couple of days.  They were kind and friendly and showed us around Boulder.


Their hospitality meant a great deal to us as we had definitely embarked on an adventure for which we were nearly totally unprepared.

• We were from a dairy farm family - that means you milk cows morning and evening 365 days of each year.  There is not freedom to be away from the cows even if you had money for such an opportunity which our family did not.

  

  Our farm in later years - still picturesque and stately

• We attended church 3 times a week and drove 7 miles from the farm to our church - Lakeside Evangelical Free Church, Winona, MN.  

  

  Lakeside Evangelical Free Church - no longer used as a church

  
  



My sisters and I were a singing trio at Lakeside during our high school years - L-R Barbara, Kathleen & Linda

• We had attended a one-room country school with about 24 - 26 other farm kids;

  

  My family outside Cross Ridge School when we attended a reunion in June 2009



Cross Ridge School classmates who gathered for a reunion in June 2009 - same blackboard we had in the 1950's

• there were 43 in my high school graduating class;
• but I had spent a year with 5000 other freshmen at the University of WI in Madison.  
• Our family had attended some family reunions with a 75 mile drive to those destinations - between milking times
• but we had never been on a family vacation; 
• never spent a night in a motel; 
• slept in a tent at Bible camp;
• had only eaten a few meals at an A&W Root Beer Stand
• and once at a newly opened McDonald's

I do not remember being afraid as we began our trip to CO.  I'm quite sure I was confident and optimistic.  I trusted God and knew we would find something waiting for us in Estes Park.

We would learn later that our mother wept as she watched us board the train and leave.  She had done her best to try to locate summer jobs for us closer to home but to no avail.  She spent many sleepless nights praying and worrying about our well being.   


Inter-Varsity had a summer program at that time which trained students who attended the Bear Trap Ranch June conference to be Christ's ambassadors on their campuses and among their friends and in whatever relationships they were able to establish while being employed.  Students who were at Bear Trap Ranch in June, would arrive in Estes Park at the end of their training.  They would locate jobs and begin to share their faith with new friends.  An Inter-Varsity staff member/s would be with them to encourage and mentor/disciple these college kids.  It seemed like a wonderful plan but without the money for the June conference, that program was not within our reach.


The girl who had told me about her waitress job in Estes Park, had been part of this program the year before.


There was an elderly woman known as Mom Manford, who lived in Estes Park.  She had been a missionary in Siam which is now, Thailand.  She had a Bunk House and a cottage on her property.  The Inter-Varsity group would stay in that housing when they arrived from Bear Trap Ranch around the 4th of July.


We had been given Mom Manford's name and address during our stopover at Bear Trap Ranch.  We had been told that she might offer us a place to stay if we showed up at her door.


With her name and address, hope in our hearts and the need for a bed for the night, we headed off in the direction of her home on the south east edge of town.


Until tomorrow...

Miss Violet Mann....

There is not much about my first Sunday at Lakeside Evangelical Free Church in Winona, MN that I remember except the Sunday School class to which I was taken and its teacher, Miss Violet Mann.  I was probably about ten years old. 
 
I was quite sure at the time that Miss Mann must have been close to a hundred years old - at least eighty it seemed.  She was short, wore a long, dark skirt, had black "granny" shoes which laced up the front - an item old women chose back then -  and wore a dark, cardigan sweater over her carefully ironed cotton blouse.  Her unremarkable gray hair was combed straight back from her face and coiled into a bun at the nape of her neck - another sign she was really old.  She wore no makeup. 

Miss Mann had a face that I still see today - some 50 plus years later.  Her skin sagged a little below her eyes and under her chin but I don't ever remember seeing her frown.  Her face was winsomely warm and tender.  She was soft spoken and yet well respected by everyone of all ages.

What I would come to learn about Miss Mann were things of which she didn't speak.  She did not have a car and did not drive.  She walked to and from church unless someone gave her a ride which we often did for her trips home.  She worked as a domestic helper and had a room in the home of a wealthy family.  She never married.  Her personal wardrobe and possessions were what most people even then considered meager. 

So what about this woman makes her a stand-out memory from my childhood?  It was her genuine, quiet devotion to the Lord and to those children she got to know through her classes in our little church.  She NEVER forgot our birthdays.  After we moved to another class and after heading off to college, we continued to receive her annual birthday card and the handkerchief she ALWAYS included with it.  I didn't think too much about it at the time but now I know that her meager personal possessions were a choice in order for her to buy the little remembrances she continued for many children for many years.  And I feel certain that those cards came with her faithful prayers for each of us. 

Miss Mann lived a long time after I moved into adulthood.  When I learned of her death, I remember calculating her age when I would have first met her.  She must have been barely forty years old!!  But her choice to invest in the lives of children was not wasted on me nor many others. 

Her selfless practice of Jesus' words from Mark 18:16,

"Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these"

remains a treasured memory of my childhood and continues to have a profound impact on me.
*****************
I have written this memory in response to a prompt from Jennifer@GettingDownwithJesus  which I found on The High Calling Blog site.  Jennifer's story about Gladys is well worth reading.

Growing up on Buffalo Ridge #1...

November 1st is the anniversary of the day my family moved to the farm where most of my childhood was spent.  I repost this blog to share memories of that day in 1948 when I was nearly 4 years old. 

I have only a few memories of my first home which was on my Great-Grandmother's farm near Viroqua, WI - seventy-five miles from Fountain City, Wisconsin. Perhaps I will share some of those early memories later but I have decided to start this story as I begin life on the 200 acre farm my parents had just purchased.

My family moved to a dairy farm on Buffalo Ridge, November 1, 1948, about one month before I turned four years old. I had an older brother, Jimmy, and two younger sisters, Kathy and Barbie.

This farm was three miles from the small town of Fountain City, WI and seven miles from Winona, MN which could be reached by crossing a big bridge. It was on top of one of the beautiful, high bluffs that borders the Mississippi River.

"I remember the day we moved to our new farm home," I said as I told my grandchildren what I remembered.

"It was a day when the weather was very cold and rainy. The rain was turning to sleet as we drove the last few miles up the long dugway that led to our new farm. I was riding in the car with my mother and sisters while my Dad and brother were driving a truckload of equipment and a hired trucker was hauling our milk cows in his big truck.

"My most vivid memory is of that big cattle truck (original drawing by Joanna Lee Worden, age 9) as it drove up the driveway onto our property. The freezing rain was whipping dangerously through the open slats of the truck bed where the cows were crowding perilously. The truck had no partitions to keep the cattle separated. The incline of the dugway and the driveway, along with the treacherous weather conditions, caused the cattle to slip, slide and fall down in their bumpy ride to the farm. By the time my father and the truck driver were able to open the rear gate of the truck, most of the cattle could no longer stand up. As the gate opened, the cattle fell out, anxiously struggling to stand and find a way to their new barnyard. (Original drawing by Lydia Rose Worden, age 7)

"I watched this fearful sight from the back porch of our new home. The saddest part of that day was seeing that one of the cows did not stand up after she fell from the truck. That cow had been trampled to death by the other cattle as they endured the harsh conditions of the day and the move."

As I recalled that difficult day, especially for my parents, I realized that I was being shone one of my earliest lessons in how people who love God and trust Him with everything in their lives should respond to adversity.

"I do not remember any expressions of anger or hopelessness from my parents. They felt the loss of this cow deeply, I'm certain, as it was part of their livelihood, but they did not blame God for their misfortune. Their trust in God was built on a firm foundation and they would continue to live in commitment to Him even when difficult things happened."

I would see more examples of their faithful commitment to God as I grew up. And I'll continue my story later."