Esther Sterling -- My Life

Esther Heacock Sterling -- My Life

July 27, 1970

The following was taken from an audio tape of Esther Sterling telling her life story.

"The birds are singing, a rooster crows and the cattle are making their presence known.

ESTHER: "Did you hear the ranch sounds?  I guess you could identify these (the cattle).  The first one (the bird singing) was a Canyon Wren and it is a little mite for making so much noise. "

Steven and Frances came over yesterday, Sunday, and brought a box of old cards and letters that I have been reading.  Floods of enjoyable memories come with reading all these old things over.

Mother sold her house and lot and each of us chose those precious old things we wanted to keep.  I chose the cellar dish, a silver-plated tea ball, dust mop, small hand-hooked rug that Joe bought Mother in Canada, corn stick pan, Mother's hand painted picture of miter Pete (Peter the parrot?)  and other little things.

Dorothy, you said you wanted the story of my life.  Well, here goes, as far back as I can remember.  I was born in a little white house in Kingsley, Iowa.  By the way, each of us six children was born in a different place and house.  When I remember the first light of day, Mother, Dad, Richard, Dorothy, and I were living in a two-story farmhouse in Ruthton, Minnesota in Pipestone County.  The two-story part I can vouch for, as I rolled down the stairs one day.  The land there was virgin and Dad and Mother worked long and hard picking up countless rocks and building fences with them.  Mother lifted me up to the kitchen window one day and we watched Richard walking on his way to school, which was at the bottom of the hill.

Dad took his gun and killed our horse which had broken his leg on the ice.  The good smell of burned over hay fields comes to me yet, from this place.

When Mary was a baby, we moved to West Branch Iowa where Dad owned and ran a feed store.  Here we became good friends with the Presbyterian minister and his family, going on outings together.  Mother and Mrs. Montgomery enjoyed painting and sketching on these trips.  There were five Montgomery children, Dorothy, Eleanor, Ruth and Ruby, twins, and John.

In West Branch, little Mary was thirsty one day and drank gasoline on a neighbor's back porch.  The events surrounding this catastrophe are as vivid as if it had happened yesterday.  I always said I started to school when I was five years old and that must have been in West Branch.

I think it was about 1910 or there about that we moved to Marion, Iowa, where Dad built and operated a cement block feed store.  We lived in a big two story house that fifty years before had been a girls boarding school.  In the large room with the marble fireplace, were screw holes in the floor, still visible where desks were screwed down.  We did not use this room.  I guess today you would call this room a parlor.

 ___________________ covered lower walls of the dining room and the kitchen was huge, at least I thought so.  Mother cooked on a big wood stove.  On a high cottonwood tree outside the kitchen hung a swing.  I was a chicken girl here and on my birthday I gathered as many eggs as I was years old.  But we didn't have that many hens.  I never could figure that one out.  My gullibility started very early.  All of us children had the measles here and we were so sick.  The only way Mother could quiet me was to promise I could hatch out chicks from eggs warmed by my own body if I'd keep myself covered well so the measles could pop out.  Aunt Sarah and her children had scarlet fever and were quarantined upstairs and Mother had to look after all of us.  Dad was quarantined too and stayed day and night up at the store.  It was here that Steven was born in 1912.  Mother showed me the trunk she had lined in blue flowered material where his baby clothes were kept.

Well, hello again, this is many weeks later.  Monday, the 27th of July 1970.  I'll just make a few notes on the rest of this tape. I guess that will be alright.  Well, I have some belated birthday greetings to Gene, I hear you are 40 years old now.  Does that make your shoulders hang low?  Richard Keith Sterling was born July 20 to Scott and Joan.  Perhaps you have received their announcement by now and that's on Steven Leggett's birthday.  We have two grandchildren born that day.  According to my figures, that makes 21 grandchildren and believe it or not, there are three in the oven.  Can you figure them out?  Karen, I liked your drawing so much that you sent and Sue your good letters are very welcome always.

Charles is real busy today, setting the pump down by the river and I am always pleased when he lets me drive the jeep for him while he hauls and sets the pipes.  He has six fields to water now and it is a continuous thing in the summer it seems.  It rained a little last Saturday but not enough to keep from having to irrigate.  He and Sterling with the help of four high school boys, two of them at a time, put up over 800 bales of hay in the barns and that is quite a job.

We've had lots of company lately, Ross and Ethel Billings dropped in one Sunday from San Antonio.  You remember them, Dorothy.  They lived down the road from us a ways.  Peggy and Sonny and Diana came for Sterling and they are all vacationing now in Montana and Canada and thereabouts.  Howard and Joann, Barbara and Laurie were here one night and two meals.  You know Howard and Daddy are such good friends and we had a real good visit.  Then Fanny, John, Steven, Mark and Jeb Baum, a friend, were here over last weekend.  They camped by the creek one night.  Four of them slept on the trailer and Fanny in the pick-up under a full moon.  She said it was beautiful that night.  The boys gathered wood and Fanny built a fire and I went down later and had a hamburger.  It tasted so good.  The boys spent most of their time swimming in the creek, though they didn't even take their bathing suits because they thought they weren't going to swim.

Sterling and Daddy and I missed you, Charlie, this summer. Sterling wanted to take you in the jeep or the pick-up to show off his driving ability.  Ruth and Clifford and Julie couldn't come here on their vacation as Ruth is expecting.  They are taking short jaunts around New Mexico for two weeks.

I'm expecting a call from the optometrist in a day or two telling me my new glasses are ready.  He has his office in New Braunfels in the same building that Charles' doctor is located.  So that makes it real convenient and I will be sooo glad to get some glasses.  Some new ones.  Mother made a little box for me for my tapes and I keep it here on library table and guess what, it is covered with the lovely blue material of the dresses your sisters wore in your wedding.  How about that.  Well, I think my time must be about up. 

Anyway so long for now.  Bye-Bye.

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