“When America’s early pioneers first turned their eyes toward the West, they did not demand that somebody take care of them if they got ill or got old. They did not demand maximum pay for minimum work, and even pay for no work at all”.
PAUL HARVEY
Grandpa Strawn and his family were getting ready to make the trip “across the plains” as they called it, to Colorado from Iowa, and Papa was there. I don’t know how he happened to be there or how he planned to meet them, but he met them in Iowa. Whether he asked to go with them to Colorado or they invited him, I don’t know, but anyway that’s how he got to Colorado and how he met Mama. The Strawn’s crossed the plains, I think Mama said, three times before they finally decided to stay West. They married in Rosita, Co. when she was 16 and he was 24.
Papa was 5’6” and Mama was 5’4” tall. They were both slender, trim-bodied people. I never knew either of them to put on any amount of flesh that you could notice, and Grandma could lay her hands flat on the floor from a standing position. She stayed very agile her whole life.
My dad was very strong. You just couldn’t believe the loads he could carry. I’ve seen him pick up a log that was almost as big around as he was and at least two times longer than he was tall, and heist it up on his shoulder and walk off with it like it was a toothpick or something. With that kind of background, a father like that and a grandfather who was a very strong person, it’s no wonder that we Bradley kids have the grips that we have and the strength of body that we’ve always had. Good hardy stock.
They lived in Rosita for a time, where Herbert was born. Lee, Cecile, and Frank were born in Aspen, and Claudia in Newcastle, and they were all delivered by a doctor.
I was born in Salmon, Idaho in 1910. Mama didn’t have a doctor, and I was the hardest birth of all of them. I suppose it was just because I was a bigger child. But anyway, she had the worst time with me, and all she had was a midwife. I was born in a little cabin where Jessie Creek and Chip Creek come together.
My first memory is moving down from the little cabin up there at the mine down to the home place and the house that Papa and the older boys built. The first thing I remember about that move was going across Jessie Creek. There was just a plank walkway across it for a bridge. Glenn was pulling me in a little cart that Frank had made for me and I remember leaning over, looking down at that water and, you know how water ripples in the sunlight over pebbles and little rocks and things? Well, it looked to me like snakes or fish or something moving down there. It looked like it was alive with movements, and I didn’t realize it was just the movement of the water. That’s the first memory that I have.
We were moving down there then so the house was already built. Lee was in the lead, and I’ve been told since that what he was carrying was his beloved Edison phonograph and his collection of records, which were cylinder records.
Papa was working the mine, so they just were there until they got a place built. The little cabin up the creek wasn’t big enough for all the family to live in and Lee and Frank had a tent, and it had a wooden base floor in it. That old wooden floor was up there on the bank of the creek for years and years after we moved away.