Memories and stories from days gone by...
From Marilyn Stenersen:
A couple of menus in the Stenersen Home were: boiled rice on Saturday night with cinnamon and brown sugar. After Leslie and I were married, Leslie liked his rice with cinnamon, white sugar, and strawberries. Also, add a little vanilla ice cream (Leslie's favorite) on top. Yumm! Sunday supper was popcorn. How about that for an easy meal? After we read about eating popcorn with milk and sugar in the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, we started eating any popcorn that was left over this way.
Ronnie remembers going to Portland with his Dad. On the way home the lights went out on the car, all the way home to Woodson, around all those curves. Ronnie remembers the moon shining bright and helping them see their way home.
Lorraine remembers going upstairs at Ma and Pa's and the boys having cut logs, standing them on end, and putting their bed on top way up high by the ceiling. Ronnie says that was great and you could see all over.
Ronnie remembers building a sauna at bean picking camp in Wilsonville, OR. This was achieved with 4' x 8' sheets of plywood on their sides and canvas sides up and across the rest of the area. Then they gathered rocks from the paths and fields and built their fire pit. The girls were enjoying the efforts of their brothers, when all of a sudden, the rocks started exploding! Oops! Ronnie says the rocks should have been river rock.
Another memory of Ronnie's: Working at Mosher's Egg Farm. Ronnie could take home the cracked eggs. He says they about had eggs coming out of their ears. How about it girls? What did you come up with for ways to use these?
From Raymond Wayne Stenersen:
In 1985 when I was 17 years old. I was visiting in New Hampshire during Halloween time and one night I got arrested for running the cops with my car. The police took me to the station in New Ipswich and told me to call someone to come post bail and take me home or else I would be going to jail. It was 1 or 2 in the morning by then and I was trying to think of who I could call at that time of the night, and not get chewed out. Billy Seppala was one of the cops on duty that night, so he comes up with this wonderful idea about having me call my uncle Skip, who happened to live just down the road from the police station. I already knew what Skip's answer was going to be, and I told Billy that Skip is just going to tell you to haul me off to jail. But Billy being a typical policeman who never listens, goes ahead and dials Skip's number and hands the phone to me!! It rings forever and all of a sudden Skip answers with what appeared to be a somewhat agitated tone, I will never know for sure because at that moment I was busy hanging up and telling Billy that uncle Skip must not be home. Billy says "Ya right, Skip never stays out this late at night, and I know he is in town because I seen him earlier this evening." So he starts dialing Skip's number again while telling me that Skip is most likely just sound asleep. Well, what do you know!! Skip just happens to answer on the very first ringy dingy, and I can hear Billy telling Skip that he needs to come on down to the police station and bail out his nephew because if he don't, then the poor guy is gonna have to go to the Valley Street Jail in Manchester where all the really bad guy's are. Billy then gets real quiet and kinda disappears around the corner to get far enough away so that I don't overhear the nice things they are discussing about me. After he comes back and hangs up the phone he suggests that I try and think up any other possible friends or relatives who might be interested in bailing me out. It just happened that Ethan Somero and Dwayne Wight had some cash on them and posted my bail so that I could go home. But before I left I asked Billy how his phone call with uncle Skip had gone and he said that uncle Skip had told him "Just take the kid to jail, I'm going back to bed." So to uncle Skip I have to say, "I am so proud of you for not letting me down" and after 23 plus years of therapy, medication, meditation, and deep breathing exercises I can finally say "I love you." Just kidding, I always have. ~Ray
From Eugene:
First time fishing, Leslie took me to Battleground Lake, There we met up with John and Roy Matson, they rented a boat and paddled around, they said the lake was about a mile deep, I stayed close to the middle of the boat, and wished they wouldn't rock it so much, don't remember if we caught anything, was glad to get back on shore, couldn't swim. Mom made us some TV dinners and froze them so we could have something decent to eat, {they were gone berry picking just me and Leslie at home} You know Leslie, always in a hurry. For breakfast it was cornflakes, couldn't wait for the frying pan to heat up. He would take out two TV dinners and leave them on the drainboard to thaw, when we got home I turned on the oven to heat up the food, but Leslie ate his cold and out the door, before the oven got warm.
I was riding with Leslie one day, we were somewhere in Portland, when he slams on the brakes and backs up. No one hit us, anyway he turns into a used car lot, and way in the back was a old ford panel truck. It had a flat tire and the sales man said the motor was froze up, that didn't faze him, he had a motor at home in a thirty 36 truck that would fit right in. Well they haggled a price, salesman was glad to get rid of it, and Leslie was excited about his new toy. Well he said OK kid I'm going to tow you home. Don't bump into me, keep the chain tight. well that was a challenge cause the old ford had rod brakes, an i had to stand on them when ever he had to stop.I was thirteen at the time, yeah that's the old blue panel truck you all know so well. When I turned sixteen I was wanting to get my drivers license but pa said I didn't need one as I didn't have a job. Well Leslie said if I had a license I could work for him; he needed some one to drive the gravel truck. Well, that's all it took, next thing you know I was taking my driving test. Leslie told me to take his '49 Ford; just remember the emergency brake don't work, so when the instructor checks out the lights and horn and E-brake to make sure it's road worthy, you pull out the E-brake put it in gear, let out the clutch, and let off the gas at the same time and it will stall; acts like it works. I practiced it a couple times and got the hang of it. So I went for my drivers test, passed the written part, but flunked the driving test. First stop sign we came to the instructor said turn right so I did, without stopping, he said go on back you ran the stop sign. Well pa said you don't have to stop if no one is coming, just wears out the brakes. I passed it the second try. ~Skip
A couple of menus in the Stenersen Home were: boiled rice on Saturday night with cinnamon and brown sugar. After Leslie and I were married, Leslie liked his rice with cinnamon, white sugar, and strawberries. Also, add a little vanilla ice cream (Leslie's favorite) on top. Yumm! Sunday supper was popcorn. How about that for an easy meal? After we read about eating popcorn with milk and sugar in the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, we started eating any popcorn that was left over this way.
Ronnie remembers going to Portland with his Dad. On the way home the lights went out on the car, all the way home to Woodson, around all those curves. Ronnie remembers the moon shining bright and helping them see their way home.
Lorraine remembers going upstairs at Ma and Pa's and the boys having cut logs, standing them on end, and putting their bed on top way up high by the ceiling. Ronnie says that was great and you could see all over.
Ronnie remembers building a sauna at bean picking camp in Wilsonville, OR. This was achieved with 4' x 8' sheets of plywood on their sides and canvas sides up and across the rest of the area. Then they gathered rocks from the paths and fields and built their fire pit. The girls were enjoying the efforts of their brothers, when all of a sudden, the rocks started exploding! Oops! Ronnie says the rocks should have been river rock.
Another memory of Ronnie's: Working at Mosher's Egg Farm. Ronnie could take home the cracked eggs. He says they about had eggs coming out of their ears. How about it girls? What did you come up with for ways to use these?
From Raymond Wayne Stenersen:
In 1985 when I was 17 years old. I was visiting in New Hampshire during Halloween time and one night I got arrested for running the cops with my car. The police took me to the station in New Ipswich and told me to call someone to come post bail and take me home or else I would be going to jail. It was 1 or 2 in the morning by then and I was trying to think of who I could call at that time of the night, and not get chewed out. Billy Seppala was one of the cops on duty that night, so he comes up with this wonderful idea about having me call my uncle Skip, who happened to live just down the road from the police station. I already knew what Skip's answer was going to be, and I told Billy that Skip is just going to tell you to haul me off to jail. But Billy being a typical policeman who never listens, goes ahead and dials Skip's number and hands the phone to me!! It rings forever and all of a sudden Skip answers with what appeared to be a somewhat agitated tone, I will never know for sure because at that moment I was busy hanging up and telling Billy that uncle Skip must not be home. Billy says "Ya right, Skip never stays out this late at night, and I know he is in town because I seen him earlier this evening." So he starts dialing Skip's number again while telling me that Skip is most likely just sound asleep. Well, what do you know!! Skip just happens to answer on the very first ringy dingy, and I can hear Billy telling Skip that he needs to come on down to the police station and bail out his nephew because if he don't, then the poor guy is gonna have to go to the Valley Street Jail in Manchester where all the really bad guy's are. Billy then gets real quiet and kinda disappears around the corner to get far enough away so that I don't overhear the nice things they are discussing about me. After he comes back and hangs up the phone he suggests that I try and think up any other possible friends or relatives who might be interested in bailing me out. It just happened that Ethan Somero and Dwayne Wight had some cash on them and posted my bail so that I could go home. But before I left I asked Billy how his phone call with uncle Skip had gone and he said that uncle Skip had told him "Just take the kid to jail, I'm going back to bed." So to uncle Skip I have to say, "I am so proud of you for not letting me down" and after 23 plus years of therapy, medication, meditation, and deep breathing exercises I can finally say "I love you." Just kidding, I always have. ~Ray
From Eugene:
First time fishing, Leslie took me to Battleground Lake, There we met up with John and Roy Matson, they rented a boat and paddled around, they said the lake was about a mile deep, I stayed close to the middle of the boat, and wished they wouldn't rock it so much, don't remember if we caught anything, was glad to get back on shore, couldn't swim. Mom made us some TV dinners and froze them so we could have something decent to eat, {they were gone berry picking just me and Leslie at home} You know Leslie, always in a hurry. For breakfast it was cornflakes, couldn't wait for the frying pan to heat up. He would take out two TV dinners and leave them on the drainboard to thaw, when we got home I turned on the oven to heat up the food, but Leslie ate his cold and out the door, before the oven got warm.
I was riding with Leslie one day, we were somewhere in Portland, when he slams on the brakes and backs up. No one hit us, anyway he turns into a used car lot, and way in the back was a old ford panel truck. It had a flat tire and the sales man said the motor was froze up, that didn't faze him, he had a motor at home in a thirty 36 truck that would fit right in. Well they haggled a price, salesman was glad to get rid of it, and Leslie was excited about his new toy. Well he said OK kid I'm going to tow you home. Don't bump into me, keep the chain tight. well that was a challenge cause the old ford had rod brakes, an i had to stand on them when ever he had to stop.I was thirteen at the time, yeah that's the old blue panel truck you all know so well. When I turned sixteen I was wanting to get my drivers license but pa said I didn't need one as I didn't have a job. Well Leslie said if I had a license I could work for him; he needed some one to drive the gravel truck. Well, that's all it took, next thing you know I was taking my driving test. Leslie told me to take his '49 Ford; just remember the emergency brake don't work, so when the instructor checks out the lights and horn and E-brake to make sure it's road worthy, you pull out the E-brake put it in gear, let out the clutch, and let off the gas at the same time and it will stall; acts like it works. I practiced it a couple times and got the hang of it. So I went for my drivers test, passed the written part, but flunked the driving test. First stop sign we came to the instructor said turn right so I did, without stopping, he said go on back you ran the stop sign. Well pa said you don't have to stop if no one is coming, just wears out the brakes. I passed it the second try. ~Skip