I'm the sixth child of Russell Dean and Ruth Gladys Van Dyke Adams. I was born April 21, 1930, in the farm home eight miles northeast of Broken Bow. My birth certificate states my birthplace as Garfield Township, Custer County, Nebraska. The attending physician was Dr. Landis, as the folks' family doctor, P.H.J. Carothers, was at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, taking further schooling. My parents named me Mildred Ruth, my first name for one of their friends, Mildred Stewart, whom they liked very much, and my middle name for my mother. My earliest memory is waking from a nap and going to the east dining room window to watch Dad and Mom butchering a hog that was strung up by the hind legs on a pole attached to the side of the granary.
I attended Senate Valley School. It was a typical country school, with grades one through eight, all being taught by one teacher. Since the school was only a quarter mile from our house, we went home for lunch. We always thought we were deprived by missing out on most of the playtime after lunch but actually we were privileged to get a hot meal.
One of the things I remember about winter as a child was sleeping in a cold upstairs bedroom. We would wrap hot irons (the ones that were used for ironing clothes) in newspaper to take to bed with us to put our feet on so we could get to sleep. Then in the morning, dashing downstairs from that bone-chilling room to dress behind the heating stove in the dining room. Of course we had to wear long underwear from the first cold weather in the fall until late in the school year when the weather warmed. It was the union suit type: long legged, short sleeved, and with a convenient drop seat. That material would stretch, especially at the ankles. It was a challenge each morning to carefully fold the bottom of the leg over so the long brown cotton stockings I wore would pull up over them with some neatness.
Girls in those days didn't wear slacks or jeans. Mom was an excellent seamstress, making most of our clothing. Before school started in the fall, she would make two new dresses for each of us girls. We would wear one for a week to school, changing into chore clothes as soon as we got home, then wear the other the next week. We washed clothes once a week so we were careful to keep our dresses clean.
Mom also made our coats, usually made over from coats given to her by our aunts. I was fifteen before I had a "store- bought" one.
Our chores after school included milking cows, feeding bucket calves, feeding chickens, gathering eggs, carrying water from the windmill for drinking and filling the reservoir on the cook-stove, and picking up cobs in the pig pen (these were used as fuel in our cook-stove). We also took our turn at washing and drying supper dishes.
Discipline for us younger children came in the form of spankings and I'm sure we deserved each one we received. The paddle stick was a slat out of the back of an old chair. We thought the reason it stung so much was because it was also used to stir the lye soap Mom made each time they butchered a hog. So when there was soap in the making we were safe because the stick was too messy to be used in a hurry.
One afternoon when the folks were gone, Francis and I decided to end the spankings, so we buried the paddle stick in the dirt under the back porch. Mom never did dig it up, but she told us years later that she knew we had buried it as Kathleen had come running the minute they drove in the yard and tattled. Christmas was a special time for me as a child. Bob was always the first to awaken and would rouse us three younger ones and we would tiptoe downstairs while it was still dark to peek under the Christmas tree to see what Santa Claus had brought. Even though my earlier years were during the Great Depression we children always received at least one gift. I remember one year it was a paperback book titled "Fairy Tales". I still have that book, but the pages are battered from all the times it was read. Another year, I think it was when I was seven, I received a Shirley Temple doll. What a treasure! The next year she was under the tree again. Mom had made a new outfit of clothes for her and had curled her hair. I was so pleased! On the dining room table there was always a bowl of hard candy, another bowl of nuts in the shell, and a bowl of oranges. We only had oranges at Christmas so they were a special treat.
Memories of what we used for a Christmas tree or for decorations at home are vivid. Bob, Francis, Kathleen and I would go to the big pasture armed with a saw and pulling a sled if there was snow. Right next to that pasture was O' Brien's pasture. In it was a big cedar tree. Bob would cut a piece of a limb of that tree to be stuck in a pail of dirt and decorated for our tree. Decorations were paper chains made of red and green construction paper, popcorn strung on a string and other homemade things.
I remember two years that we didn't cut a piece of that old tree. One of those years Mom took a large tumbleweed and dipped it in a big bowl of liquid starch then sprinkled it with ivory soap flakes. We kids decorated that and had a special tree. The other year Mom made a fireplace out of a huge box, covering it with crepe paper that looked like bricks. It was fun to hang our stockings on that and pretend that Santa would come down the chimney.
Memories of summer when I was a child include hoeing and pulling weeds in the garden and trying to drive the grasshoppers out. When I was a little older, I prepared meals for our family while Mom was busy gardening or helping in the hay field. I was also in 4-H club, taking cooking, canning and sewing projects.
Another summertime memory is picking potato bugs off potato plants for a penny per row. It seemed the rows were a half-mile long but I'm sure they weren't. We each took a tin can with a small amount of kerosene in it. We were to pick the bugs and drop them in the can. The kerosene was to kill the bugs. Our town cousins were visiting us one day when we had to de-bug the potatoes again. We talked them into helping us but it didn't take them long to decide there had to be an easier way to earn a few pennies. They sat at the edge of the potato patch and waited for us to finish so we could play with them.
I also remember drowning out gophers in the little pasture near our house. We would carry axle grease buckets full of water from the tank, pour it down the gopher hole and wait for the gopher to decide it was too wet in his burrow and would come out for air. Bob and Francis would then kill him with a stick. Then we'd start on another burrow and so the hours went. We thought this was a great sport.
When Kathleen was small, I'm not sure if she was quite school age yet or not, our parents left us four younger children home while they went to a funeral in Broken Bow. Francis, Kathleen and I thought it would be fun to teeter-totter. Bob was busy with something else. We evidently couldn't find a board so we put a piece of one-inch diameter pipe across a barrel that was laid on its side. We took turns riding it and were having lots of fun. But one time when Kathleen and Francis were riding it, Kathleen began to slip sideways. She put her arm down to stop her fall and it bumped the ground. She didn't cry until she saw that her lower arm was curved. We yelled for Bob and after assessing the situation, he decided to ride the pony to get Junior (we called Russ, "Junior" until he was a grown man), who was helping Mr. Moseley work on the township roads putting in new culverts. After awhile, Mr. Moseley brought him home in his pickup truck and told me to put a towel around Kathleen's arm and they would take her to Broken Bow to find Mom and Dad. I grabbed the dirty hand towel by the washstand in the kitchen. I didn't realize he probably meant for me to get a clean dish towel. They found our parents, who took her to the doctor. He put a cast on it. Later, after her arm was healed, Dad cut the cast off. She cried and cried. So to hush her, he taped the cast on again for awhile.
One of the most memorable experiences in my childhood was a trip we took in August, 1940, to Oregon to visit Wayne, Evelyn, and their four month old son, Kermie, and Uncles Edgar and Sid, and their families. Our 1937 Ford car was filled with Dad, Mom, Russ, Bob, Francis, Kathleen and I, our luggage and some food. Just west of North Platte, our car quit. I don't know if it was a vapor lock or if it needed a new fuel pump. Dad went for help while the rest of us waited in the car. I remember worrying that we might have to turn around and go home. But after awhile, we were on our way again, traveling as far as Pine Bluffs, Wyoming, where we spent the night. We stayed in cabins along the way, doing all our cooking as each cabin was equipped with a kitchenette in those days. We also packed a picnic lunch each morning to eat along the way.
At noon one day we were in strictly sagebrush country in Wyoming. Without a tree in sight under which to spread our lunch, Dad parked the car along the side of the road. Bob and Francis went racing through the sagebrush while we set out the food. I remember Bob couldn't eat as the smell of sagebrush was on his hands and he couldn't bear to have them near his face. We saw so many beautiful and interesting places. The Green River Gorge, Multnomah Falls, The Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean stand out most in my memory.
In 1943, Dad rented the Frank Rogers farm, also known as the Cole Ranch, just east of Broken Bow. The buildings were on the hill between Highways 70 and 2. There were two houses on this place. We moved March 1st into the smaller one as the former renters, Mrs. Cole and her family, were given permission to occupy the other house until their new home was completed on their ranch near Milburn, Nebraska.
As it happened, we lived in that house for nearly two years. The kitchen had a sink with a pitcher pump so no more carrying buckets of water. And this house had electricity! I felt like we had really "come up in the world"! Later, a water pressure system was put in and bathroom fixtures were installed so our home was modern in every way.
Since we were now living in the Broken Bow school district, we attended school in town. Adjusting was quite an experience for me. You can imagine how frustrating it was being in the eighth grade, coming from a one-room school to Jr. High where we went from classroom to classroom as the high school pupils did. Then there were lockers for each of us, with combinations to remember! For years, I would occasionally have a dream about not being able to find the right classroom, or forgetting my locker combination and having to go to the principal's office for help.
We milked cows at this farm, too, which we did before and after walking the two miles that was the distance from our house to North 9th Street where the school was located. There were no school buses in those days and gas was rationed as this was during World War II.
We moved into the other house in January, 1945. It was a nice two story, three bedroom home with a full basement and one and one-half baths. The kitchen was equipped with an electrical outlet for a stove and no place to put a stovepipe. Since this was wartime, electric stoves, among other things, weren't being made. So we set up our wood burning stove in the unfinished basement. We cooked and ate there, except when we had company, then the food was carried to the dining room on the main floor.
Dad bought one of the first electrical stoves available after the war. One of the favorite memories of my high school years was playing a trumpet in the band. It was the same trumpet Wayne and Bob had played. C. Ward Rounds was the music instructor and he liked to have the band perform during halftime at the football games. Most school mornings in the fall, we would be practicing our drill formations on a frosty football field an hour to an hour and a half before the bell rang for our first class.
In my Junior and Senior years, I was one of the 17 out of 64 band members chosen to be in the pep band after trying out for a part. We played at pep rallies and every basketball game at home and away. I was also chosen to be a member of the trumpet trio in both my Junior and Senior years.
To make spending money, I worked at Penney's store on Saturdays and during Christmas vacation my senior year.
Since I wanted to be a teacher, as both my older sisters had been, I took a Normal Training course the last two years of high school, passing the exams to receive a teaching certificate with which I could teach right out of high school.
After graduation in 1947, I signed a contract to teach Sunflower School west of Merna on Cliff Table. There were 11 pupils in seven grades. The Saturday before school was to begin, Dad took me to Clyde and Rema Jared's, where I would be boarding. That evening, I accompanied them to Merna when they took their cream and eggs to Graybeals Store.
It was there that Rema reintroduced me to their neighbor, Harold Coleman, who had served in the U.S. Army at the end of World War II and was home again farming. (Our families were mutual friends of the Jareds and we had met several years before when Janice was teaching school in their district). About two weeks later, he asked me for a date to go to the movies with him. That began a lasting romance.
After staying with Jareds two months, I boarded with Everett and Lillie Halliwill, whose son, Eddie, was one of my fourth grade students. As I was walking to their home one night after school, a small airplane circled overhead then landed on the township road right in front of me. Harold was taking flying lessons from Clarence Romans. Seeing me, they decided to land. Clarence then took me for my first airplane ride while Harold waited, as it was only a two-passenger plane. Harold told me later that my eyes were "big as saucers" when they taxied toward me.
In January, I received my engagement ring and we were united in marriage in May. Our first home was one half mile north of Harold's Grandfather Schaad's house. Rural electrification hadn't come to this area yet so we used kerosene lamps. There was water in the house, though, by way of a pitcher pump in the kitchen.
In 1949, we moved a mile north of the highway on the George Milligan farm. This house didn't have any modern conveniences. All the water for household use was carried from the well that was about fifty yards away. That summer we bought a Serve 1 propane refrigerator.
We milked a few cows by hand and had laying hens. The proceeds from the cream and eggs paid for our groceries and personal needs.
In 1950, the Custer Public Power began building electrical lines on Cliff Table and our home was wired in anticipation. The first part of July 1951, the lines were energized. What a happy day that was! Soon after that, we purchased milking machines and an electric separator so our chores were much easier.
In 1954, we moved with our two young sons, Gail, age five, and Dean, age 10 months, to the farm where Harold had been born.
Early that summer, I made the most important decision, I feel, that I've ever made: I received Jesus Christ as my Personal Savior.
We continued to farm, ranch and raise our family of four sons, Greg being born in 1956 and Neil in 1959.
Through the years we have faithfully attended Cliff Union Church, located just one mile east of our home, where all of our family has been active in the various departments.
Now, our sons are established with homes and families of their own. Gail and his wife, Karen (Karl- berg), live in Greeley, Colorado. Their children are Tracy, Heath and Andrea. Dean and his wife, Melody (Warren), have a daughter, Natalie, and two sons, Matthew and Aaron. They live near Arnold, Nebraska. Greg and his wife, LeAnne (Fox), and their children, Stephanie, Michaela, Chad and Lindsey, live in Halsey, Nebraska. Neil and his three daughters, Christina, Candi and Kerri, live in Arnold, Nebraska. We especially enjoy the family gatherings with our children and grandchildren.
Harold and I are still in the farming and ranching business. My role has changed somewhat though. Instead of caring for a family of boys and keeping up with their activities I am now helping Harold wherever I can by driving a tractor in the field, helping with the cattle, or just running errands.
I love the country and the good life it brings in spite of the trials and tribulations. The Lord has been very good to me.