Jeannie Watt

Jeannie Watt raises cattle in Montana and loves all things western. When she's not writing, Jeannie enjoys sewing, making mosaic mirrors, riding her horses and buying hay. Lots and lots of hay.

Cowgirls in the Kitchen – Jeannie Watt

by

Hello everyone! Today we’re talking cornbread. Is there anything better with chili, stew or soup? I’ll come right out and say that I’m picky about the texture of my cornbread. I like it moist on the inside and crispy on the edges. Too many times I’ve bitten into a golden square of deliciousness, only to blow crumbs because it was as dry as a desert inside. After trying recipes that gave me overly dry or overly spongey cornbread, I came up with my own. I like it. I hope you do, too.

Jeannie’s Cornbread 

NOTE: you must use a cast iron pan

1 cup cornmeal

1 cup flour

1/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 tablespoon baking powder

2 eggs

1/2 cup milk

1 cup buttermilk

2 tablespoons butter

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Put the 2 tablespoons of butter into a 10 inch cast iron pan and set the pan in the oven to melt the butter. Be careful not to burn the butter.

Blend the cornmeal, flour, sugar, salt, soda and baking powder in a bowl.

When the butter is melted, or close to melted, break eggs into large bowl and beat them until they are nice and foamy. Pour in the milk and buttermilk (shaken before poured) and beat again. You want air in your liquids.

Add the flour mixture, then stir only enough to mix. Do not beat this batter or you’ll get rubbery cornbread.

Pull the hot pan out of the oven and pour in the batter. It’ll sizzle and start rising–so satisfying! Pop it back into the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes.

Happy eating everyone!

Keeping A Sod Home Pest Free

by

My great grandmother lived in a sod house once upon a time. In the family album is a photo of her standing next to the tiny dwelling with a baby in her arms. Studying it, as I often did, I couldn’t help but wonder how she kept her house pest free. When I lived in a mobile home in Nevada desert country, there was always some kind of critter trying to get in and I did not have the disadvantage of a dirt floor and roof.

A little background:  sod houses, or soddies, were built on the Great Plains during the latter part of the 19th century using blocks of sod as building materials. Some were dug into banks. The use of sod blocks for walls was a practical solution for the lack of timber on the plains. The roofs were made from a framework of branches or wood if available, covered with hay or straw, then topped with more sod. The floor was usually packed dirt. As you can imagine, the buildings were well insulated, but could be damaged by prolonged rain.

So how did the sod house dwellers keep out insects, rodents, snakes and the like? The short answer is they didn’t. Not entirely anyway. It wasn’t unusual to find the occasional snake taking refuge from the elements or mice eating through the walls. I won’t even get into the insects and spiders.  That said, here are some of the steps they took to cut down on the unwelcome visitors.

Keeping a cat kept down the rodent populations. Of course, the cat was also prey to larger creatures such as coyotes, so keeping a cat could be tricky.

Walls were plastered, white washed or covered with newspaper to both lighten the room and to keep varmints from infiltrating the space. If something did burrow through, it was easier to see the tunnel or home.

A fabric cover, of made of feed sacks, was spread under the ceiling to keep insects and spiders from falling on the occupants of the sod home.

The dirt floor was swept often, thus removing creeping insects and disturbing the nesting spots of those that stayed in the corners.

Plants and herbs were used to repel pests.

Food was kept in containers if possible to keep out weevils and other hungry invaders. If the container was fairly air tight, such as a covered tin or jar, the odor of the food would not bring in rodents.

Despite these precautions, it wasn’t unheard of for a sod home to become so infested with insects, particularly bedbugs and fleas, that the occupants had to abandon their home and build another.  There was no calling in the Orkin Man.

We have it so easy now when it comes to pest control. I’m proud to say that I lived off the grid for 22 years in the desert and never had a mouse in the house. That said, I once had more than 20 starlings fly down my chimney and enter the house via the flue. You just never know. Have you ever had a pest adventure?

Goldie Griffith, One of a Kind

by

I love colorful women who push boundaries and Goldie Griffith was just such a woman. Born in Illinois in 1893, she perhaps had a head start in the boundary pushing game, her father being a medicine showman and her mother an entertainer.

After leaving home, Goldie joined Blanche Whitney’s Athletic Show, comprised of women wrestlers, boxers and gymnast. Goldie performed as a boxer and a wrestler. Her next stint in the entertainment involved Buffalo Bill Cody, whose Wild West Show she joined as a lady bronc rider. Goldie didn’t know how to ride a horse when she was hired, but she quickly learned.

In 1913, Goldie married Joseph Harry Sterling in a surprise ceremony during a Wild West Show performance in Madison Square Gardens. Buffalo Bill gave the bride away in front of an audience of 8,000 people. She wore a bright red western outfit that is now on display at the History Colorado Center in Denver.

Unfortunately the marriage did not work out. Goldie and Harry had one child before she discovered that her husband was accused of murder in Texas and also had another wife. Goldie did not take the new well. She opened fire on him, in public, with her shotgun. She didn’t hit him but was arrested. Goldie tried marriage again, but this union ended more quietly with a simple divorce.

Goldie’s other accomplishments included being the first female applicant to the San Francisco Police Department; stunt riding in early western films, training dogs for World War II, ranching and owning successful restaurants. Goldie Griffith died in 1976 after a very full life  doing pretty much whatever struck her fancy.  What a gal!

Just When You Think It’s Safe… and a Give Away

by

Every year around the first of April I start getting the itch to grow things. I start my tomatoes and peppers (if I haven’t already–sometimes I’m impatient). I note the dates that the local greenhouses will open for sales, usually May Day or Mother’s Day and start planning how many plants I need for the various beds. I honestly intend to keep a record each year, but I never do. I guess I like the adventure of winging it.

May came and my mom and I went to Costco and bought their most excellent petunias–20 for her, 50 for me. We also visited the local greenhouses and purchased pot filling flowers such as snap dragons, pansies, zinnias and cosmos. My indoor flower storage area was getting full. Like, really full. The temperatures were unseasonably warm at night, the days in the 70s, approaching 80.  And then, to really light a fire under me, my mother did a terrible thing–she planted! I told my husband that I was going to plant the very next day. I checked the weather. There was a 50% chance of rain and the low temperature was in the high 30s.

Guess what? Temperatures unexpectedly plummeted an on May 14th, I woke up to this:

View of my house from the chicken yard where my girls told me they’d prefer to stay indoors.
Rocket saying that this is disrupting his breakfast.
My Aussie Posse glad to be in the cab.

I did not plant my petunias. My mother spent the morning tarping her planters and putting sprinklers in her garden. (She managed to save everything.)

The snow only lasted a day, but the cold hovered, and it’s only been during the past week that I’ve dared to set plants out. The sad thing is that it’s happened before, but I was so certain it wouldn’t happen this year. Not with temperatures in the 70- 80 range. But, my plants are out now and looking gorgeous. Now I just have to hope that we don’t get the June blizzard.

My question to you, for a chance to win a $10 Amazon gift card, have you ever had unexpected weather disrupt your plans?

 

Do You Remember Here Comes the Brides?

by

When I was eleven years old, my favorite television show was Here Comes the Brides.  For those who are unfamiliar, the show involved the Bolt brothers–Jason, Joshua and Jeremy (the cute one)–owners of a logging operation near Seattle. Their lumberjacks threaten to leave the area due to the lack of women, so they make a deal with the local sawmill owner. If he pays for 100 marriageable women to travel to the area, the Bolt brothers will guarantee that all will stay for one year. If the women don’t stay, then the sawmill owner will get the Bolt brother’s land and operation.  The interesting thing is that this is loosely based on a true story.

Asa Mercer was born in Princeton, Illinois, the youngest of thirteen children. He traveled to Washington territory as a young teen in 1852, where his family became one of Seattle’s founding families. He returned to the Midwest to attend college, graduating from Franklin College in New Athens, Ohio in 1860. He then returned to the Seattle area, where he and his brothers cleared stumps to make room for the new territorial university.  Since he was the only college graduate in the area, he was hired as the president and sole instructor of the Territorial University of Washington, which would eventually become the University of Washington. He received no pay.

Lumber and fishing industries thrived in the area, leading to a lopsided gender balance–lots of men and few marriageable women. In 1864, financed by public and private funds, Asa Mercer traveled to Boston to find women willing to relocate to the Seattle area. He returned with eleven women, although The Seattle Gazette reported at the time that there were 50. Eight of these women became teachers in the area, and nine of them were quickly married. The two remaining women unfortunately passed away.

Mercer made another trip in 1865, partially funded by local lumber mill owner Hiram Burnett. He procured additional funds by charging local men a $300 fee for the transport of a future wife. After he arrived on the east coast, Mercer’s activities were written about in The New York Herald, which reported that the women he recruited were destined to marry poorly. Due to the bad publicity, he only managed to recruit 100 women instead of the 500 promised. And then there were difficulties getting to Seattle. The captain of the ship transporting the women refused to go farther than San Francisco. Eventually he convinced lumber schooners to transport the women for free and he (finally) arrived in Seattle with the brides-to-be.

Mercer himself married a Mercer Girl, Annie Stephens, a week after arriving in Seattle. It’s said that descendants of the Mercer Girls make up a significant number of native Seattlelites.

Sarah Rosetta Wakeman: Union Solider

by

Union soldier Lyons Wakeman, who served in the 153rd New York Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War had a secret—Lyons’s real name was Sarah Rosetta Wakeman.

Sarah was born in Afton New York on January 16, 1843 to Harvey and Emily Wakeman and was the oldest of nine children. She grew up on the family farm, which struggled financially. She worked as a domestic servant in her teens, but with no prospects for marriage, and wanting a more financially stable future, she made a gutsy decision–she moved to Chicago, dressed as a man and got work as a boatman on the Chenango Canal. It’s unclear whether her motives were purely financial.  Some of her many letters allude to a family rift.

Sarah met Army recruiters while working as a boatman and enlisted on August 30, 1862, receiving a $152 bounty. She claimed to be 21 at the time, but she was only 19. Her regiment was assigned to Alexandria, Virginia. Ironically, one of her duties was to guard a prisoner who happened to be a woman arrested for impersonating a Union soldier.

Soldiers of the 153rd New York Infantry (The Met, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/268038 )

Sarah wrote many letters home, often sending money, in what appears to be an attempt to heal the family rift.  Sarah often signed her given name to the letters, a move which would have ended her military career if they had been intercepted. Her letters described her pride in being financially independent, being a solider and living a free life as a man. If anyone discovered Sarah’s true identity, they kept her secret. Her letters indicate that she fit in well with her fellow soldiers.

Sarah’s regiment was called to active battle duty in February 1864, and took part in the Red River Campaign in Louisiana.  She saw combat on April 9, 1864 and survived the battle. After the battle, she sent her last letter home. Unfortunately, she became ill with dysentery and died on June 19m 1864. (Thousands of soldiers died of dysentery from drinking contaminated water during the war.) She was buried with full military honors at Chalmette National Cemetery in New Orleans, with a headstone that read Lyons Wakeman.

Sarah’s letters, and thus the story of her military service, were stored in a relative’s attic and went unread by those other than her family until 1976.  The letters have since been complied into a book: An Uncommon Soldier by Lauren Cook Burgess

 

Mailing Children

by

I read  an interesting question the other day — “When did it become illegal to mail children?”

The answer is in June 1920. After that date you could no longer have your children delivered to relatives by the US Postal Service.

The US Parcel Post Service began January 1, 1913, allowing rural communities to receive packages that weighed more than four pounds without relying on the private delivery services. This was a huge boon to both mail order companies and the rural recipients of their goods.

The original regulations for what could or could not be mailed through the Parcel Service were vague, leading to people mailing all kinds of unusual things, like bricks and snakes, just because they could. Regulations during those early years varied from post office to post office depending on how the postmaster interpreted the rules. Just weeks after the parcel service began, an Ohio couple, Jesse and Matilda Beagle, mailed their eight-month-old son to his grandmother who lived a few miles away. The postage cost 15 cents and he was insured for $50.

In February of 1914, four-year-old Charlotte May Pierstorff was mailed from Grangeville, Idaho and traveled by train to her grandmother who lived 70 miles away. She was accompanied by her mother’s cousin, who worked as a mail clerk. The 53 cents postage was much cheaper than a train ticket and the stamps were affixed to her coat.  When the Post Master General heard of this incident, he banned the mailing of human beings.

The ban didn’t slow some people down. In 1915 a woman mailed her six-year-old daughter 720 miles from Florida to Virginia by train for 15 cents. All in all there are seven verified cases of children being mailed. In August of 1915, three-year-old Maud Smith was mailed 40 miles to visit her sick mother in Kentucky. The postmaster got called onto the carpet for that incident and that was the last recorded child mailing.

People still tried to mail their children, however, and in June of 1920, the assistant Postmaster General refused the request to mail two children as “harmless animals” and the practice was officially outlawed. It was still legal to mail bees, bugs, baby chicks and other harmless animals, but not those of the human variety.

Hometown Hoedown – Cowboys, Miners, Butch Cassidy, Oh My!

by

 

My husband and I moved to Winnemucca, Nevada in 1984 as newlyweds for a one-month drilling contract at a developing gold mine. We ended up staying for 32 years…as one does. I had my kids there and taught school in the area for 29 years. I still think of it fondly, nine years after leaving.

Winnemucca is located in Northern Nevada on the Humboldt River. Because of its location, the area has been continuously inhabited since the 1830s when beaver trappers, such as Peter Ogden, built camps there.  One of the first settlers, a fur trader named Joseph Gianacca, built a ferry allowing travelers to cross the river, and the settlement then became known at French Ford.

Winnemucca

In 1948 Northern California was given to the USA by Mexico, and French Ford developed into a popular stopping point for emigrants traveling along the Humboldt Trail to California.

Silver was discovered in the Humboldt Range in 1860, bringing in miners. Ranches also began developing in the area in the mid-1860s, and some of those ranches are still in operation today.

 

Basque shepherds came to Nevada in the mid-1800s (bringing with them their dogs, called Australian Shepherds), and Winnemucca remains one of the hubs of Basque culture in the United States. Basque hotels are famous for their family style dinners and unique cuisine. Winnemucca had two such hotels, one of which is still in operation as a dining facility.

The Martin Hotel–a historic Basque hotel

The Central Pacific Railroad reached Winnemucca in 1868 and in 1869 Winnemucca became a stop on the Transcontinental Railroad. The Chinese working on the Transcontinental Railroad created a China Town in the city.

After the Transcontinental Railroad was completed, French Ford was renamed Winnemucca in honor of a famous Paiute Chief.

Chief Winnemucca

Because of the railroad, Winnemucca became a shipping hub and a center of commerce in the 1970s. Cattle from ranches in northern Nevada, southern Oregon and southwest Idaho were drive to Winnemucca to be shipped by rail to Sacramento and San Francisco.

In September of 1900, Butch Cassidy and his gang is alleged to have robbed the First National Bank, riding away with more than $32,000 dollars. Some of the money is said to still be buried along the muddy banks of the Humboldt River.

Today Winnemucca boasts a population of close to 8,000 people. It’s still a cowboy town, so it’s not unusual to see buckaroos in full regalia shopping in the local grocery store. There are numerous ranches, large and small, in the outlying areas, some dating back to the 1860s and 1870s.  It’s also a mining town. Nevada is the third largest gold producer in the world and several of the gold mines are located nearby.

There’s a thriving Basque community in the area, one of the largest in the US, and a yearly Basque festival is held in June. Winnemucca is also home to the Buckaroo Hall of Fame, which honors legendary cowboys and individuals of the Great Basin.

Lastly, if you’ve heard  Johnny Cash (or anyone else) sing I’ve Been Everywhere, you’ll hear mention of a little town called Winnemucca in the preamble. Also, Rod McKuen, who spent years in Nevada, wrote a poem called Winnemucca, Nevada. He says he learned his first cuss word there.

So, if you’re ever driving on Interstate 80 between Reno and Salt Lake City, you’ll pass through Winnemucca. And when you do, I hope you’ll remember it’s rich history.

Go Lowry Bucks!

The Miraculous Oxydonor

by

How wonderful it would be to have a device that cured every disease!

That is exactly what the Oxydonoor, purported to do. Invented in the 1890s by Dr. Hercules Sanche, and released to the general public in 1896, the Oxydonor consisted of a nickel plated tube containing  a stick of carbon with wires leading from it to electrodes attached to a metal contact pad. The user of the device would put the tube in a bowl of water, attach the metal plate to a wrist or ankle, then lie in bed while the Oxydonor did its work. The colder the water, the more effective the treatment, according to Dr. Sanche.

How did the Oxydonor cure all diseases except for those that were terminal? By forcing oxygen through the skin into the body, of course. People of the era did not understand that oxygen could only enter the body through the lungs.

The device was said to stimulate nerves and increase blood flow as the oxygen levels in the body increased  which, in turn, cured diseases. Dr. Sanche  stated that his device was so effective that it would soon take the place of doctors.

Guess what? It didn’t work.

Guess what else? Dr. Sanche wasn’t really a doctor. He was a businessman who devised a field of medicine called diaduction. He believed that an undercurrent connected all natural organisms, and a disruption of that current created illness. Oxygen, he believed, could restore the disruption of the natural current, thus the Oxydonor. He moved frequently to stay one step ahead of the authorities as the complaints rolled in, but continued to market his device and to warn the general public against imitators.

In 1915 a fraud order was issued against him in New York, and he was sentenced to 18 months in jail. He avoided shutting down operations after that by moving to Montreal Canada, where he continued to market his device until the 1950s.

If you are interested in trying Dr. Sanche’s miracle device, you can pick one up on eBay. There are several listed there.