So the beginning seems like a good place to start. I was born in Montpelier, Idaho on July 13, 1957. I was the youngest of 5, having 3 older brothers and 1 older sister. At that time we lived in the town of Montpelier. It was a small town of about 2000 people. The whole area was rural and a lot of farming communities scattered around the valley. It was the Bear Lake Valley as we called it. When I was 5 we moved to the family farm, in Wardboro, just 4 miles from Montpelier. This dairy farm is where my dad grew up. My grandparents still lived there and managed the farm. I remember our home in Montpelier was very old. At the time it seemed like a very large house, with a large back yard. However, as an adult, I have seen the lot that the house was on and it must have been much smaller than I remember it. It had 2 bedrooms up stairs. My sister and I shared a bedroom with my parents and my 3 brothers shared the 2nd bedroom. Our bedroom had plenty of room to walk around in, but my brothers' room was wall to wall beds, with no space in between, just enough room at the end of the beds to walk in. The downstairs had a living room, dining room and kitchen. Of course there were bathrooms, one upstairs and one downstairs. I mention the bathrooms, because the 1st home my parents lived in did not have indoor plumbing. It was a very small home, they called "the cottage". It was by my grandparents' home on the farm. They had an outhouse and had to haul water from the well to wash with. It had a kitchen, bedroom and a root cellar. My 2 oldest brothers were born while they lived there. It is still standing today, and at the time I was growing up, it seemed more like a playhouse than somewhere someone would actually live. I can imagine how happy my mom must have been to move out of the tiny cottage into the 2 bedroom home in Montpelier. When we moved from Montpelier back to the farm, we moved into a newly constructed home with 3 bedrooms. It also had a full basement where my brothers slept, so 6 bedrooms in all if you count the basement space where they hung sheets and such to separate the rooms. The basement was never finished. It did have walls built with studs, but no drywall. It did have indoor plumbing of course, but never did have a washer and dryer hookup. We had to go into "town" (Montpelier) once a week to do laundry at the laudromat. Even so, what a major improvement in living conditions my parents went through.
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Mom and dad in front of the cottage.
That little building on the right is the outhouse.
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The house we moved to when I was 5.
The wheel chair ramp was not there when I lived there. It was added later for mom. |
