Little Cousins

Aunt Emma took pictures of her little nieces and nephews for years & years on every occasion that came along. I don't remember any of the occasions but the pictures are great!

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Reed and I look like something isn't going our way, maybe Aunt Emma was interrupting our play and bugging us to line up on the front porch so she could take our picture. I really liked riding my tricycle around on the sidewalks in our yard. Notice how adorable Reed looks sitting in his pedal car. That's our dog "Biscuit" is laying on the porch.

We had quite a few cousins in our family so Aunt Emma was always taking our picture. It had to be her hobby to take pictures and develop them in her closet because we snooped in her bedroom and found her picture developing trays and chemicals in her closet.

Mom & her Thundering Herd!

We sat, lined up on our livingroom couch many times, watching TV. Our house was very basic with 3 bedrooms and one bathroom. The black & white TV set was in the corner of the livingroom opposite the couch. We each had our favorite TV shows but on Saturday night every week, we all watched the count down of the hit songs to find out which song would be #1 on the Hit Parade. I remember songs titles such as "Autum Leaves" and "Love Is A Many Splendored Thing" reaching #1.

I know this picture was taken on a Saturday night because my hair is all put up in what was called "pin curls" held in place with bobby pins and a bandana. My hair was put in pin curls wet and left to dry over night while I slept. We didn't have an electric curling iron, just bobby pins! Mom curled her hair the same way. From the looks of Reed's hair in this photo, I can tell he spent lots of time in the bathroom combing it just perfect! Most of the time my hair was awful on Sunday morning & I cried at the sight of the jangled mess. No amount of combing & fussing could tame it down. My hair woes went on continually.

When I was about 16, I saw wigs advertised in the newspaper at a depatment store in Seattle. I was sure a wig would solve all my hair problems. Mom & Dad actually took me and Reed to Seattle on my wig shopping trip. I sat in the chair and the man fixed me up with a brown wig (very cheap, cost under $20.00) and I was happy! I wore the wig out of the store but on the trip home, Mom turned around to look at me as I sat in the back seat. She gave a little jump of surprise & said she thought she saw shaggy dog but it was me! I never did wear that wig out in public. I tried and tried to make it look good on me but it never looked good no matter what!

Years later when Sheri & Roger were little kids, I made another attempt at wearing a wig. The wig was higher quality and I actually wore it in public a few times until a man in our ward asked if he could borrow it. He wanted to wear my wig as part of his costume in a "Rock Band" act. I let him borrow the wig but I never wore it again. From then on that poor wig was only good for the kids to wear on Halloween.

1957 Nielsen Family Dinner ~ 613 K St. S.W.

Family dinner time was an every day happening in our family but this may be the only snapshot of us sitting together around the dinner table. It appears that Dad took our picture, thus preserving the moment that we took for granted at the time. Looking at this photo now, 52 years later, I am feeling rather old! Mom was in her 30s and we were the little kids.

We ate simple food, mostly meat, potatoes and gravy. Mom was really good at making hamburger meat patties & frying them up fast then making milk gravy in the pan. Mom bottled fruit every summer & we drank raw cows milk. We weren't familiar with exotic vegetables such as broccoli and cauliflower or green peppers, we ate regular vegetables such as corn and green beans that were easy to grow out on the farm. Mom and Dad weren't gardeners, they were farmers.

Mom made lumpy whole wheat mush for breakfast, I still don't like lumps in my mush. Can you see a 2 quart jar sitting there on the table with a little milk left in the bottom? It reminds me that Mom hated spilt milk. She hated the mess! Even if we almost spilled our milk we were in trouble. Mom learned to cook when she was a teenager cooking for her brothers and father on their dry farm in Pocatello Valley, Idaho every summer. She learned to cook "Poke Style" where the food was served on the table in the cooking pan and the milk was poured straight from the jar it was stored in. Nothing was fancy, just easier when all the household water was carried in from the well and had to be heated on the wood burning stove.

In 1957, eating at a restaurant wasn't done in our family. I don't think the idea of taking us kids to a restaurant ever came up! There weren't many restaurants in Quincy, Washington and fast food was coming in the future, except for the A&W Root Beer stand. Sometimes we went there to buy a gallon of root beer in a jug so we could take it home to make our own root beer floats...it was much cheaper to do it that way.

1949 Oldsmobile 88

That 1949 Oldsmobile 88 was our family car when we moved to Washington in the early 1950s but it had a prior history. I have a faint memory of going to Logan with Dad to bring it home as a new car. It was painted two tone... gray on the bottom and cream color on the top. When it was still quite new Mom decided to drive it to LasVegas! She and a few girl friends were going to see a show starring their favorite singer, Vic Damone. He must have been a real lady-killer at the time! Mom arrived back home with little candy treats for Reed and I but bad news for Dad. She had wrecked the new car! The next thing I remember was getting the car back with a new paint job. It was two-tone but with orange on the bottom and cream on the top. I didn't know it at the time but Mom's favorite colors were red and orange. The car looked really snazzy painted orange. Sometime later, Mom had our livingroom couch cut in half and re-upholstered with fake leather in a bright red color. Yikes! Still later, when Mom chose the paint color for the kicthen walls in their new house out on the farm, she chose "Flamingo Red" and it looked fabulous! Even later when she chose the formica counter top color for the kitchen in Utah, she chose orange! I liked it so much that I chose the same color for our kitchen. Red and orange are vibrant, lively colors just like Mom's personality!

The Nielsen Kids Sometime Around 1952

Here we are, four little kids squatting down along the driveway in front of our house! Reed holding Baby Gayla, Ruth & Rosalin. Ordinarily, a photo like this one has very little significance except that it captured a snippet of time more than 50 years ago. However, the expression on Ruth's face speaks volumes! On this day we were all dressed & ready for a one time trip to Yellowstone National Park. Aunt Virginia took care of Gayla while we were gone and we should have left Ruth with Aunt Virginia too. Three year old Ruth was very naughty the whole time we were riding in the car. We were captive in the car for hours listening to Ruth chant, "I want soda pop, I want soda pop, I want soda pop! She kept it up all day!

By the time we arrived in Yellowstone Park the weather was acting up too. It was a fierce thunder & lightening storm with pounding rain. Bolts of lightening flashed in the road right in front of our car as Dad drove us around looking for a camping spot. Eventually we found a spot & Dad got out in the rain to set up the tent, scooping at the puddles with his shoes to move water out of the way.

While Dad was out in the rain, we were watching from the car. Nearby campers were in their tents getting ready for bed & we got our eyes full watching the silohettes of one couple as they changed their clothes. The side show was soon over & we were settling down in the tent for the night...all except Mom! She said there was a drip hitting her in the face all night.

The sun shined in the morning & Dad cooked breakfast over the campfire. We saw the sights in Yellowstone then we found a better camping spot right in close view of "Old Faithful." The people in the next spot were very friendly & we were anxious to have Dad set up tent, however, camping another night wasn't setting well with Mom! She absolutely refused to consider staying no matter how much we begged & pleaded. Knowing how I feel about camping now, I can see how repulsive it must have been to even think of trying to sleep another night in a stinky, wet tent!