Shortly after my 12th birthday my family moved to Kamiah Idaho. My dad had found a beautiful piece of land there where he planned to build a house. It was early August and we knew we couldn't finish the house by winter time. Instead, we decided to camp out in tents while we built a small cabin to make it through our first winter. My sister and I slept in a tent with our parents, while my three brothers crammed themselves into a two man tent.
My dad spent months looking for a job. There didn't seem to be work anywhere. We lived on money from our savings account, but it was running out quickly. My ten year old brother had insulin dependent diabetes and without insurance his medical supplies cost $200 a month.
We managed to get enough money together to buy materials to build the cabin but it began snowing after we had managed only to build the floor. We moved our tents onto the floor to keep them off the wet ground. We quickly built the rest of the cabin, but were unable to insulate it. With what little money we had left, we bought a pack stove that was intended for use in a tent, not a cabin. It was our only source of heat. It was cold and there was no where to go to get away from the cold. When we went to church on Sunday, I relished the warmth of the building.
My brothers and sisters and I came up with creative ways to fight off the cold. At night I slept with two of our three cats in my sleeping bag. They wanted the warmth as much as I did. During the day, we played hard to keep our bodies warm.
When summer finally came, my dad found a job working on a pig farm, but was only making a few hundred dollars a week and we still didn't have insurance. What little money we had left in savings was going fast. We learned ways to get food without spending money. In the summer time we had a garden and we picked wild berries from bushes growing on our property. The people who had moved out of the house closest to us had left their chickens to roam. We set traps for them and caught a few. All of our eggs came from those three hens. During hunting season, my dad bought us all deer tags (except my brother who was too young). Because the law requires the person holding the tag to harvest the animal, we each took our turn being responsible to bring home food for our family. We had no electricity and no refrigeration. We relied on cold days to keep the meat fresh.
When winter came the second year, we had so little money that food was getting hard to come by. My mother did her best to keep us fed. Most days we ate ground wheat boiled in water, spaghetti noodles boiled with a few bouillon cubes or wheat pancakes topped with jelly or powdered sugar. My mother kept a jar of sourdough and sometimes for a treat we would make sourdough biscuits that were fried in a pan on top of the pack stove. We sometimes ran out of cooking oil. Those were our worst days.
The cabin was not big enough for all of us to sleep in, so my dad stretched a tarp around the cabin's porch to give us more room. We went to the storage shed were we kept all of our belongings and got our beds. Two of my brothers slept in a bunk bed in the enclosed part of the cabin. My sister and I slept side by side on the porch. My parents slept on a foam mattress on the floor and my third brother slept in the attic of the cabin which was so small he couldn't sit up without hitting his head.
At night we went to bed as soon as it was too dark to see. We didn't have enough oil to light our lamp every night. My dad would manage to scrounge enough money to buy batteries for our flashlight once a month. My sister would entertain us at night by reading a chapter from one of our mother's books. We always wanted her to read more, but we knew that once the batteries died there wouldn't be anymore for a whole month.
During the winter we took baths in an old metal tub. We heated water on the stove. The bather got to stay inside the cabin next to the stove. The rest of us had to wait on the porch in the cold. In the summer we bathed in the creek.
All of our days, even the bitter cold ones, were spent playing outside. We had very few neighbors, but were fortunate that the ones we did have had children our own age. We made up countless games to play among the trees on our property. Our holidays were very creative times. Decorations were made with old scraps of paper. We learned that we could make taffy with sugar and water boiled on the stove. We made little presents for each other at Christmas time and for birthdays. Sometimes we found enough money to buy a candy bar for the birthday boy or girl. Those days were filled with joy.
My mother was home schooling us at the time and even though we had very little resources she managed to seek out ways to keep us learning. During that two year period, I made my first quilt, knitted my first sweater, and learned how to put a zipper in a dress. I gave my first public demonstration in 4-H, learned to butcher a deer, to dip the baby lambs umbilical cords in iodine and to wash clothes by hand.
The saddest time I had during the two years we spent in Kamiah, was when my father moved away to find a job somewhere else. We didn't see him for five months. Finally he came back with a moving van and we all went to our new home together.
Even though we had very little, some of my fondest memories were made in Kamiah. They were made without money and without knowing what the future held. Those two years of poverty taught me to value my family above anything else. I will always look back on that time with a smile.
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