Postcards from 1946.

We lost our mother when we were young, so the few pictures I have of her are very precious to me. I guard them with my life. My mother and father divorced when I was eight, and I only saw him once (when I was 16) before he died. We don’t really have anything that belonged to  my mother, for a number of reasons, I suppose. One reason being our grandparents on Mom’s side moved in to take care of Mom and us five kids, before Mom died, and being faced with raising five kids from 2 years to 14 years of age, saving Mom’s things for us probably wasn’t a priority of Gram’s. Another reason being that after Gram died, her only surviving daughter decided that everything in Gram’s house, belonged to her. By the time we were old enough to wonder where things were, and to want pictures or anything that might be left, it was too late. When we’ve asked for copies of pictures, etc. from the aunt – we’re told that they “were lost in a basement flood”, “misplaced years ago”, etc. etc.

But, besides the pictures of Mom and Dad, I have two postcards that I treasure dearly. My mother and her sister were in Milton-Freewater, Oregon in 1946 and sent these postcards home to Idaho, to their youngest sister. 

This one is of the First Christian Church, and on the back, my aunt wrote, “We sang in the choir in this church. Pretty, no? Name is First Christian Church.”

This one is of Stadelman’s Cold Storage building, and on the back my mother wrote this to her youngest sister, “Hi Squirt, this shore is a beautiful town and yesterday the wind almost blew us off the streets.  Today it’s so damned hot I’m about to die of the heat. Just thank your lucky stars that there’s a tree within walking distance of you, ’cause we’re in the desert. Lois.”

Last week, T had to be gone for the day, so I took a day trip to Milton-Freewater, to find these two buildings in the postcards. And I found them.  

Here is the church now. In this first picture, I tried to take the same view as the postcard. I took the second one so that I could see the whole building.

Stadelman’s was harder to find, and didn’t look like my postcard. I went inside their office and talked to two nice gentlemen, who told me that most all of the original buildings had burned to the ground in 1990, and that I was looking at what was rebuilt.

I can’t explain how I felt looking at these buildings. And thinking about the fact that my mother attended the church I was standing in front of. And that she walked the same streets that I was walking. I can’t explain the feelings, but I can tell you – they were good. I felt that ‘connection’ that I sometimes need so much. I have and do miss my mother even more as an adult, than I did as a child.

It was a good, but strange day for me. Although there have been a few occasions in my life where I was ‘alone’ (where I traveled for business reasons or things like that) those times were rare. I have had someone by my side all my life – a parent, a sibling, a friend, a child, a mate – and I rarely am alone. While I was in Milton-Freewater, I was so very aware of being there alone. In a different state. Without family or friends. T was where he could not be reached, and so I called my sister, Caryl,  nearly every hour. I told her that for some reason, I just needed to keep ‘touching base’.  A strange day. But good.