Cabin Home Memories

This is not the cabin home our family lived in during those earliest years.  As I have travelled around the area over the years I came across this cabin home standing in a field near Bancroft, Idaho.  It reminded me so much of the home in which I was born and  where Dad and Mom lived and raised their family through most of the first ten years of their married life.  We lived here until shortly before Nina was born in February of 1946.  I remember returnng to this home that February after having spent the previous six months living at the Budge Ranch near Nounan on the Bear River.  The smell of mice and the mouse dropping were everywhere.  We cleaned it up and went on with our life.   Dad had gone to the Budge Ranch to work as a ranch hand while Mom worked as a cook for the ranch hands.  Brenda and I lived with them there the entire time.  Ellis was in school at the time and he stayed in Paris with Grandma and Grandpa Eborn (Nina and Arthur).  He would then take the bus after being picked up on the highway side along Highway 30  and we would pick him up again along the highway on most the weekends. He would stay with us until it was time to go back to school and then Dad would take him back across the fields to the highway to catch the bus back to Paris for another week at school.  Dad had taken this job in order to earn extra money with the intent to pay off the farm mortgage early.  The mortgage was not due for another 30 years, but he worked hard and sacrificed and so did Mom, and they did indeed pay off their loan early.  I have often thought how different the world would be if everyone, including the leaders of businesses and nations followed this example.  For them it made sense.  Listen to the prophet and do what he said.  Dad hated the "D" word (debt), and tried to avoid it at all costs.  When it was necessary, he made every effort to pay it off as soon as possible.  People came to know this and trusted him implictly.  He was honest and people knew it.  It brought peace to his soul. I wonder sometimes whether civilization is advancing or retrogressing.

Bart