Sent by Helen Dennis. S/o Jay Miller and Eva. They owned a Phillips 66 station in Clarkston, WA.
The materials to do it were close at hand and she had seen the others start fires in the stove. Being small, she could not quite reach all the way to ignite the kindling, she instead caught her clothes afire. She screamed and ran, and her sister Molly chased her around the table. Melissa ran into the room, and with Rose still in one arm was able to grab a pail of water and pour it over Pearl to extinquish the flames. Both Molly's hands were burned, and Pearl had burns over her neck and chest area. There was no doctor available, but Melissa called her relatives to come. An aunt and uncle came each day to pray for the children, and Aunt Annie dressed the burns daily for the children.
Though they both suffered with the wounds, both recovered with loss of
function. Pearl carried the scars on her neck for the rest of her days.
When the family decided to move to Idaho, Pearl went with the small
children and female members of the family to visit for a month with the
relatives who were to be left behind. The grandparents were not to see this
family very often after the move. The grandmother gave the two smallest girls, Mabel and Rose, each a little blue cup to take on the train with them.
The children rode to school on horseback after they settled in Washington. Sometimes they doubled up on the horses, and sometimes they harnessed them to a wagon to drive. Bob and Jim, Mabel and Rose, and Pearl all went to the country school. Pearl finished the eighth grade.
The parents did not often leave the girls at home alone, but they needed to take a short trip, so asked Pearls friend Anna Roberts to come to stay with her while they were gone. The girls were bored and wanted to earn some money. There was not much that a girl to do earning money, but they decided that if they dressed in Pearl's brothers clothes and put their hair under a cap, they could apply for a job as farm hands. They went to the neighbors, and disquised as they were almost hired before they were found out. Girls did not wear pants, and certainly did not work in the fields as hands, as the job was lost.
When the parents came home they brought a phonograph. It was black with a red horn extending from it. The horn had flowers painted on it, with it came some discs which were inserted to play music. The neighbors came from all around to hear this new machine.
A young man was working for the neighbor hauling wheat to Astin. He had to pass by the Hiatt place, and Pearl met him. He was young, handsome, a good dancer, and very musical. He could clog dance, and call square dances. It was not long until he and Pearl were courting. It was hard to find somethng to do when he came calling however, as Melissa did not believe in card games, dancing or skating and she watcher her daughters carefully. Sometimes, Ray and another young man would come together to get Pearl and a friend or a sister and take them by taxi to a movie. Melissa would frown on this form of amusement also. On Sundays, people gathered for a prayer meeting, and no more work was ever done than was necessary to keep the animals and family fed.
On Sat. they baked and prepared food for the next day. Sunday was observed as possible as a day of rest and prayer.
Pearl was slim about 5'41/2 and weighed 112 pounds. She had a 22" waist.
grayish green eyes. She was a good dancer, and she and the young Ray Miller
made a nice couple. Pearls brother, Bob was courting a girl by the name of
Mabel Black, and they decided that they all should be married at the same time. The two girls set about sewing their dresses. Pearl made hers in blue and Mabel in pink. Mabel laced her black shoes to match the pink dress. Jim Kennedy went with the two men to Lewiston and they got the license. On Feb 26, 1912, the four of them set off for Lewiston to find a minister. None was available, so they went to the courthouse and were married there by a judge. First one couple, with the other two as witnesses; then the second couple repeated their vows.
Pearl and Ray went on Prescott, Wash. where they had a job working on a
farm. They worked for Fred Sharp and the Wheeler Ranch. For a time they
worked for a Mr. Bowes and then moved on to Medford, Oregon. They lived in a
rooming house and worked in the fruit orchards. When the season was over, Ray moved back to Prescott and left Pearl with a friend, until he had earned enough money for her passage back to Prescott. Later they moved to Cloverland Flats to work for Pearls father. Their first daughter was born in a house on Asotin Creek. The house was built on top of a stream so that water ran uder it all the time. While the women were busy in the house with the birth of the child, men were in the farmyard tending to the hog-butchering. They named the daughter Eleanor Mildred.
Ray and Pearl moved to a cabin in the Blue Mountains and were cutting wood and posts for her ather, during the winter of 1918, whe the fle epidemic hit. Pearl was very sick and Ray sent to Asotin for a doctor. He cam but did not know what to do for her. Watson heard and went to the doctor to inquire of his daughter. When he heard how very ill she was, he sent her sister Eva to tend to her. Eva was always the nurse of the family, and although she had no formal training in medicine, she was talanted and had studied on her own. She knew that she would have to get Pearl out of the moutain cabin and into town, so they wrapped her in blankets from head to toe and carried her to the sled. The illness left Pearl with a hearing problem.
They sometimes had to haul water by sled or wagon for as much as a quater
of a miles. Pearl always wanted flowers. She said that a home was not a home
without flowers around the dooryard. So, even though it was a hardship to
obtain the water she planted nastariums, sweet peas or some kind of a flower in a bucket if necessary. Sometimes Ray amde a wooden container and she planted them on top of a stump, where she could carry out any waste water to keep them alive. They had terrible lightening storms. The lightening would strike trees close by and the thunder would be deafening. They would take a candle and go into the firt cellar to stay unil the storm had passed. Even the dog knew to go there during a bad storm and sometimes would be waiting by the step when they arrived. The dog, Spot was Eleanors constant companion.
When Eleanor was six years old theymovedto Clarkston Wa to a house on
Bridge and Faqir near 13th St. A while later they moved to a house on 6th st. and it was here that Spot was run over by a car. That was a big loss to the little girl when she lost her dog.
They moved to the house on seventh St. and bought it. Here the family
lived for 20 years. Ray was earning a living by then by lathing and shingling houses. He was a hard worker and joined the union. They would send him out on jobs and he would be paid by the hour. It was at this time that the metal lather were coming into use and he learned to use them. Often time he would have to go outside of town to work and Pearl and the girls would have to live alond during the week.
Though they were required to work hard, there were many fun times to
remember. Sometimes they would start out by wagon, and gathering neighbors as they went they would end up at Antone at a sawmill where they could dance. Ray could play the mouth harp and call square dances. Someone else would be found to play the fiddle, or some kind of instrument so that a dance could be
started. They would take along blankets and line the children up along the
wall on benches to sleep, while their parents danced. Everyone brought
something to eat and at the stroke of midnight, they stopped to share a pot of coffee brewed on the old wood stove, and pass out the potluck lunch. Any child old enough to stay awake joined in the dancing. Sometimes they got home just in time to start the farm chores. Luckily most of the horses knew the way home, because the friver was usually asleep by the time they went home.
About 1928, Pearl decided to learm to drive a Model A. car. She was doing fine driving to her parents house, with Ray as a teacher, until they came to the turn in. She was going to fast so he instructed her to keep going to turn around. She backed into the nieghbors fence while turning around and he had to fix the fence. He didn't scold her but she decided to give up driving. The girls took over the chore as soon as they were old enough so she had transportation. But when they began to leave home she again was left without means of getting around. They owned a house and two lots nearby, so one day while they were all gone, she took the car and went to the empty lot. There, she practiced backing, turning, and driving ahead again until she felt she could get a drivers license. It was a big day then "Mom got her license to Drive".
Thought Ray worked at his trade all week, he could never keep away from the dance hall on week-ends. When one wasn't available, he ran it himself. For years he ran Horton Hall in Clarkston and the V.F.W. Hall. Sometimes he
enlisted Eleanor to some in to chord on the piano to help out with the music.
On Friday nights they could usually get professional musicians to come in. Ray could always fill on the violin or harmonica if need by, and could call square dances.
The halls were a favorite place forthe young people to go on weekends.
Little Faye, always regareded as the baby fy the family was dimpled and cute.
She also did not talk plain, which did not worry the family as she had her own lingo. They did not realize that her cute speech would be a determint to her when she reached school age. She couldn't keep a secret. They all went
together and bought their Dad a present for Christmas, and cautioned Faye to
keep quiet about it and she did try. When her Dad came home she said " We
bought a Xmas present for you, but I"m not going to tell you about the
harmonica in the closet."
After the flu in 1918, Pearl had trouble with her hair. She had lost
nearly all of it and it did not grow back in thick as it once had been. She
watned to cut it short, but Ray insisted that if she did he would get drunk.
So one day, in a fit of temper, she pulled it all to one side and wacked it
off. It wasn't a very stylish cut but she had gotten her way. Later she had
to have a friend help her straighten it up, so she could be seen in public. Ray did not carry out his threat.
The relatives came by ofter. Pearl came from a big family and someone was usually passing through town. They always stopped to visit the parents who still lived in Clarkston. Sometimes on holidays there were 35 or 40 people gathered at the grandparents house for a big meal. Melissa loved to cook and since they always had a big garden and lost of canned foot it was not a chore for her to feed so many. They raised their own chickens and had their own eggs. The children of the Miller family grew up visiting with the grandparents.
Grandfather Hiatt had a nickname for most people and he called his daughter Pearl "Piney" all her life. Eleanor was "Sissy".
Stories as told to Helen Dennis by Gerald Putnum as he remembered them
from his Grandfather Watson S. Hiatt.
Perlina Hiatt was brought with her brother ans sisters by train from Iowa to Asotin, Washington. She was very close to her grandmother Betsy Hiatt, but she never saw her again. My mother was only four but she remembers that Grandmother Betsy gave her and her sister Rose a little blue cup and that is her only memory of her grandmother.