More Memories at Tommy's Cabin

More Memories at Tommy's Cabin
Copyright Joanne H. Harris, 2008

We lived at Tommy’s cabin for at least a year, as best I remember. Daddy went into partners with Rollie and Oakley Horne at a sawmill on top of the mountain. He’d stay up there for a few days, and then he’d come down and be at the cabin for a few days, and then he’d go back up. That’s right – the sawmill and the girl who ran away! That was around 1939.

I remember very little of this story. We were at that sawmill. My cousin Beverly Austin, was there, too. There was a girl there cooking for the men. She couldn’t have been much older than Audrey and Beverly, and they were eleven or twelve. She decided to run away and took Audrey and Beverly with her. They went down off the side of the mountain, down and down, and nobody could find them. There was a great hue and cry, but they couldn’t be found.

Mother went to Nick’s ranch in Walker Basin because the mountain went down there. My mother told Nick that the girls were lost. She didn’t know at the time that one of them was running away, but she knew when they had left the sawmill. Nick took a look and said, “O.K., we need to leave about 1:00 o’clock.” Mother threw a fit but Nick said, “No, we don’t leave before 1:00 o’clock.”

About 1:00 o’clock they got into his car and he drove up into a canyon at the bottom of the mountain. He got out and said, “Now, you call.” My mother yelled for Audrey and Beverly and they answered. Nick really knew the mountain. Apparently, canyons being what they are and uphill being very steep, people funneled into this area. So that’s how Nick found them. The girl had been running away and took Audrey and Beverly with her. It was a very primitive place, a very primitive place.

Beverly had to have been with us when we were living at Tommy’s cabin. I remember Audrey and Beverly made me a dollhouse out of a box a foot-and-a-half square and about ten inches high. They took the box lids, the parts that folded down, and slotted them into the box to make rooms. Then they took sticks and made a closet. (I’ve never forgotten this because I always figured I was going to make something like this for a kid.) They cut out clothes and stuck them to the coat hangers and cut out paper dolls and put them in the doll house. It was an amazing little thing.

We thought we were having fun. We didn’t know we were poor. I never in my life thought we were poor folks.