Grandma Golden

As you grow older, ninos, you will become curious about your ancestors. You may secretly hope that some are rich or famous, celebrities of their day. You will peer at old photos and wish you could spend an hour back in time learning more about their lives and why they made their choices. I will tell you what little I know. The young girl on the left is your ancestor Golden Violet Young, GG's mama and my grandma. The picture was taken in 1896 in Clyde, Kansas when she was four years old. Her sister Zola was eight and brother Bernard was six. Later her brothers Lambert and Ralph and sister Pansy born in 1907 were added to the family.



This is Golden Violet Young before she became Grandma Deeds. GG says she was a tomboy, a strong-willed hellcat. She drove a team of work horses in the family orchard at Fruitland, Idaho, hauling a freight wagon filled with crates of fruit. This must be how she met Granpa Deeds who was picking fruit in the orchard. She dressed like a boy when she was working and rode horseback without a saddle, a scandalous act in her day. A companion photo to this elegant picture shows a dapper young man, perhaps her first love. GG says she fell for Grandpa Deeds on the rebound. Even so, it was a strong match. Unfortunately her parents did not approve of the romance and it appears they eloped in 1912.


In this picture, Grandma Deeds is holding her first child Pearl, born in 1914. The older woman is Golden's grandmother Rozelle, her mother's mother. GG remembers her Great-Grandma Rozelle and has several stories about her but those can be told at another time. Grandma Deeds is 22 in this picture. Grandpa Deeds had a good job with the sawmill at this point. The marriage is still new and their family just beginning. They lived in town and life was good.

Grandma Deeds in 1941 with her first grandchildren, Uncle Judd on the left and cousin Shirley (Pearl's daughter). Notice how carefully Grandma's hair is arranged, and she is wearing hose and fingernail polish. She is 49 at this time, still raising her youngest daughter Helen. She has spent almost thirty years being moved up and down the Idaho landscape by a wonderful man who wanted nothing more than to hunt and fish and care for his family. She has been cooking and cleaning, mending and tending her spouse and five children. And still she takes pride in her appearance, she cares for herself. GG took me to see the house they lived in when this photo was taken. It has an outhouse (a separate little wooden shed with wooden seats over a hole in the ground) and water piped to a pump handle at the kitchen sink. This was one of the nicer places they had lived in thirty years of marriage. Grandma made the transition from spoiled, willful, wayward daughter to a homemaker who could function in the most primitive of conditions. She maintained a quiet strength and endurance through trials of extreme poverty and deprivation that we can only guess at now.

Grandma Deeds with her sisters Pansy (left) and Zola (right). They were girly girls to her tomboy. Pansy married but quickly returned home. Zola married and raised a family. This was taken a few years before the end of Grandma's life. I remember her reading movie magazines and caring for her parakeet; she rarely spoke to us. By this time, she had forgotten how to play. I know now that Grandma still had stories to tell, she had laughter and life left in her but none of us knew how to draw it out. We could not see past the dowdy old lady with birdseed on her carpet. It was our loss. I wish I could have seen Grandma on that wagon, reining those huge work horses, wish I could have known the fiesty young woman she once was. I am grateful for her strength and endurance, and the four strong women and iron son she raised. Here's to you, Golden Violet.