Eunice Ann Reed

1904 – 1990

When I was a very little girl, my Father was sent to Prague Oklahoma to manage a lumber yard there.  We lived up over the office until my Father could build his own house.  I do remember my brother and I climbing over stacks of lumber, digging into tar barrels and chewing it.  Later after our house was finished, I remember helping Mother, playing in our lovely yard, garden and in the barn.  We had a cow, and lots of chickens that I loved to feed.

Because I was a very lonely child most of the time as my brother was always out playing and doing Boy things and Mother thought I should stay inside most of the time, I had a lot of pretend friends.  One time, I was about three and half or four, I ran away from home to visit a pretend friend, or just to go, I don’t recall.  One of Mothers friends gathered me up and took me home, so I really didn’t get very far.  

As I grew up Mother still kept me close to her and I could only play with children of her friends, most of whom had no children my age, all much older.  Then when I was about nine (1913) we moved to a little town called Eufaula, Oklahoma, where my Father and an Uncle put in their own lumber yard, and I was at last allowed to go to school.  

I then was allowed to have friends my age, that was wonderful, but didn’t last very long as Mother became ill and we left and came to Coronado California .  Life became lonely there especially since Mother being bed-ridden all the time.  Part of the time we were able to have a woman come in and help with the house work, but most of the time I did the bed making, dish washing, a lot of the cooking and cleaning up.  Some times my brother would help with the dishes.  But except for the 3 months after he had surgery, he was in school too and afterwards helping my Father in a small grocery store he had taken over shortly after we went to Coronado .

That time was my first experience of the ocean and of course couldn’t go to the beach alone – only with a friend of Mothers who had three children of her own, all younger that I.  We were in Coronado for about 2 years (1918 – 1920). 

In the mean time, my Father had gone back to Oklahoma City to another lumber yard and when Mother was able to be up, we followed.  Life there was the same except Mother was up and about most of the time.  Then after about a year there Mother decided it was time to move again, and we should get a farm.  Well my poor Father was not meant to be a farmer, but he did work hard at it, and at a very bad time as that was the beginning of the “Big Dust Bowl”.  Every thing dried up and burned – even the water.  So after a year and half, and Mother sick again, we left and came west to Prescott Arizona .  

I did learn to sew and cook under Mothers guidance and that was good for me.  After Mother died in 1922, I was sent to a boarding school in St. Louis Missouri .  It turned out to be a sort of detention home for wayward girls, but there were also nice girls there.  I didn’t stay but three and a half months.  That was plenty long enough!!  

After returning to Prescott , I went to Flagstaff and there I completed high school, and did about seven or eight months college work in Home Economics.  There is where life really changed as there is where I met your Grandfather, married and started my wonderful family.  End of girlhood and enough said!

(Written May 1985 age 81)