One tough break after another for homesteaders

Betty Downs came to Johnson Lane at the young age of 12 with mother and father Bessie and Walter Downs. If you missed the first chapter you can revisit it by going back to the May 8 edition of The Record-Courier.

I had an Australian husky, named Lobo, which Dad had gotten from a young guy in Carson, who had originally bought him from a man named Slim that lived out in the Pine Nuts. He had a sleigh and a team of Huskies and used them to rescue people that were lost or trapped in the snow around Nevada or California.

Anyway, I loved that dog so much, but he had gotten the taste of killing other animals and Dad said if he didn’t find another home for him, he would have to be killed. Lobo was my only friend at the time. He used to meet me at the back door and walk with me to and from the outhouse. I would put my arms around him and lay my head on his and cry because I knew when Mom and I got back from LA he would be gone. Dad gave him to Gene Scossa, who lived on the other side of the valley, and that is a whole other story.

Christmas of 1954 was not the best in my lifetime. Dad was going back into the hospital for more surgery after Christmas. Someone had given us two chickens to cook for dinner. Mom bought me a pair of underwear, Kenneth a pair of long johns and a checkers game for our gifts.

While Dad was in the hospital with the surgery after Christmas, (I believe that was the one where they placed a pin in his arm) someone gave us an old, little coupe car to use.

We were going to the hospital one night after dinner. Mom had fixed all the food we had in the house. Which I remember was beans, fried potatoes and cornbread. A couple showed up at our house that we didn’t know, but Dad had kind of saved the man’s life (another story) one of his times in the hospital. Anyway, that couple took us to the hospital, and after that took us to a little grocery store and bought us $17 worth of groceries. Somehow, they knew we didn’t have any food. Does that tell you something?

After Dad was released from the hospital, the lady that owned the ammunition house told us we had to move into the other one, also made out of ammunition crates, only smaller if that could be possible. We lived in those ammunition crate houses for about two years. When it started to warm up in the spring we would go over to the reservoir and go swimming just to cool off and be able to submerge our bodies into water above our shoulders. One time in late summer we had been swimming for quite some time. I came out of the water with several leeches attached to me. That was the last time I went.

Dad was now working part time for Bill Godecke who ran the Chevron Gas Station in Minden, which was right where the convenience store was next to COD used car lot.

Whenever we came to town, Kenneth would drive with Dad seated next to him, he still didn’t have a license. Mom and I were in the backseat, I would lie down in the back seat when we got close to town as I was so embarrassed to be seen in that old car. We would park our car next to Bill’s gas station and walk over to Minden Merc or Minden Park and then back. We would come on the back road all the way past the creamery. The manager of the creamery called Sheriff Batchelder because he thought there were three men in the car and they were casing the creamery so it could be robbed. Sheriff Batchelder came to the gas station to check out our car. When he told Bill what the manager of the creamery suspected, Bill had a real good laugh. He told the sheriff, it was a homesteader from Johnson Lane with only one good arm, his teenage son was driving, with his wife in the back and their young daughter. When that story got around, Mary and some others called my mom a “Gun Maw.”

Finally, sometime in the winter of 1956, Dad had surgery one last time when they took bone from his hip and grafted it into his arm.

We lived in that house until almost the end of my eighth-grade year in 1956.

One day, when I was in school, they came and got me because Mom had a stroke and was in the hospital. It seemed the lady that owned the house we were living in wanted to vacate it so her mother could move in. She was giving my Mom orders to get everything cleaned out. She was standing over my Mom while Mom was cleaning out the ice box and my Mom had a stroke. She couldn’t walk for a couple of days and then dragged her left leg for a while.

We were homeless, before homeless became cool.

Luckily, an older gentleman we knew, who was the father of the man who first told us about the homestead land, had a house at the top of Muller Lane and let us move in with him for just a few days.

I hope you are staying with me on this adventure. We have one more chapter to go. One thing this chapter illustrates the how residents of the Valley come together to help each other. That is a philosophy that continues today. Whenever someone has a need this neighborhood and this entire valley pull together as a community to fill the need. We have numerous examples and I for one am proud to be part of this wonderful area.

On to Chapter 3.