Dealing With It-2 Cast of Charcters

                                                             

                                      

It's unfortunate that the family's move to Grants Pass was too early for TV cameras to track the drama of those Landers Family adventures.  You wouldn't need scriptwriters because the dialogue just bubbled up from the interactions of the individual players.

John Earl was in his forties when the first daughter, Virginia Helen, made her appearance in 1927 followed by William Charles in 1930.  Mary Ella filled out the cast in 1932.  John had been a warrior. He ran away from home when he was 17 to join the US Army and his mother, Ella Maud Landers, was so overjoyed to see him gone she signed the papers for his underage enlistment.  He celebrated his 18th birthday in the Philippine Islands as a part of the United States' deployment to put down the Philippine Insurrection of 1902. While there he went with a detachment of soldiers sent to China to join other European nations putting down the Boxer Rebellion.

John returned to America where he used money he had stashed playing poker to attend a couple of years in college in Kansas then signed up again in the Army under Black Jack Pershing to chase Pancho Villa around northern Mexico.  It was this General Pershing army that formed the core of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) that went to France in World War I.  By then he was a top Sergeant in his regiment.

Eunice Elizabeth Ramsdell was in nurse's training when she and John were married in Cove, Oregon on the 21st of June, 1922.

Virginia was a top student who took violin lessons and became an accomplished player.

William (Bill) was a particularly fine looking boy who was intellectually advanced above his school peers. Good hair.

Mary was last kid who was blessed with a friendly demeanor that set the tone for sibling harmony.

John's mother, Ella Maud, was sent by God to test the forbearance of all the other dwellers on the planet Earth.

Couch surfer Don McDougal became a beloved semi-member of the clan.

Editorial note: This series makes no attempt do be a definitive account of all those family years on the Redwood Highway.  The intention is to give a snapshot of one of the more entertaining periods that features a family member who had a bag of tricks that never emptied. The full appreciation of her force field is difficult to capture with words.

Stand by with the cameras.  Something big is about to happen.

                                                            (To be continued)

Dealing With It -1 Southerly Migration

Only those of us with a low Social Security number will remember going to the Saturday matinee in anticipation of viewing the short thriller that preceded the featured movie.  It was a continuing drama designed to bring us back to spend our dime to find out how the protagonist escaped the terrible fate awaiting him/her at the end of last week's episode. 

But while these episodes are brought to life from that other century,  I will give them a Twenty-first Century TV series format where it was like you were waiting each week to see what mischief Tony Soprano was up to. This will be a series about the family I grew up with.  The series name is, Dealing With It.  There will be seven episodes. Followers of this blog may have no interest in reading about my family so go back to your TV and watch Coronavirus news until July 9 when I'll be back with non-family episodes.

                                                      

                                      Dealing With It-1      Southerly Migration

                                                                                                              

In 1937 my parents, John and Eunice Landers, moved our family from La Grande, Oregon to a six and a half acre farm seven miles west of Grants Pass, Oregon, on the Redwood Highway. Here's how our southerly migration came to pass...

John had been friends for years with Major Karl. Major (his name, not his rank) lived outside Grants Pass, Oregon where he raised egg-laying chickens on a three acre farm.  He was the brother of the wife  of John's older step-brother, Bill Beckwith. Major sold John on the plan to buy a farm and live on the bounty of the land (eat what you can, what you can't eat you can.) Major promised to teach him everything he needed to know about making that work. 

A year and a half before the move John had suffered a serious accident while working as a railroad switch tender for the Union Pacific Railroad.  One night he swung off the engine to throw a switch and his pants leg caught on a hose hook causing him to be swung under the engine and having it run over his right leg. It was, of course, a bloody mass of flesh and bone which the doctors planned to amputate but John ruled that out and so he was sent to St. Vincent Hospital in Portland where he came under the care of one Dr. Dodson. A year later, after multiple surgeries,  John, with his cane, walked out of St. Vincent where Eunice awaited him in their new 1937 Dodge touring car. The railroad had settled his claim for 10,000 Depression-era dollars.

"Eunice," John said, "Let's pack up and move as far away as possible from the Union Pacific Railroad.  Let's go see Major Karl."

                                                         (To be continued)