Author: Ron Guenther
Written: October 3rd, 2013

This is just a quick aside. It seems that some of you may think that Grandpa Sam had had some drugs down there in Peru. That is highly unlikely. Grandpa Sam was very much against drugs and alcohol and feared their use and effects. Drugs were a real problem in the early part of the 20th century in this country. Recall, the “coca” in the product “coca cola” refers to the coca leaf. When you ordered a coke, you meant some cocaine should be in it. After the drug laws outlawed it, the cocal cola company substituted caffeine for it to give one the boost you used to get from the original coca cola. Actually, the coca leaf is not as strong as the refined version, cocaine, and the Indians for centuries used it as a pick up and in religious ceremonies. But grandpa hated drugs. Aunt Berchion used to roll her eyes when she mentioned that he had mountain fever, but there is a version of mountain fever here in the US that is potent. We call it Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever or just plain mountain fever. Actually, it should not be called Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, because it is found in many parts of the Western Hemisphere. In South America it is often called tick fever or Sao Paolo fever as well as mountain fever. It can be lethal. He probably got it sometime just as he started his trek into the mountains of Peru. It can be serious and those visions he had of the city of gold and the city of the dead were the results of memories from his hallucinations. The older Perrys, Mr. and Mrs. Perry all claimed that he was a different man from before and after he went to South America.

At any rate, he came into the house in the late spring and said they should all head out to Peru where he had all this property. But it was apparent to him and to all that Grandma Alice was sick, very sick. They of course immediately went to the doctor and he examined her but could not determine what was wrong, but he knew it was serious and so he did what many doctors of that era did. Nobody wants their patients to die on them and so he said they had to travel. That is now considered patient dumping and it is considered very bad form when a doctor does that, but that was routine in those good old days. Another relative of ours was told to travel, our Uncle Will Sander, the brother of Uncle Heini. So he and his six or seven children piled into the car and started driving, he even visited us. Us children were captivated by him. He was a neat guy and had lost the use of one eye and that was amazing, just like Long John Silver. After a month of that, Uncle Will declared himself to be healed and went home and felt like a million dollars. But with Grandma Alice, it was different. She was deathly sick. The year was 1922, she died in 1925, so you see that she did not have long to live. Grandpa sold his farm and lived off the sale for the rest of his life. He deposited the money in the bank and traveled like they all did in those days with a letter of credit. So, they all started out. Initially, Uncle Arch drove again, his brother, Uncle George bought his share of the farm, paid off Grandma Alice, Aunt Dee, the wife of Uncle Arch came with and they headed West, first stop being again Spokane. Shortly after they arrived in Spokane, Aunt Berchion got her driver’s license and they left Uncle Arch and Aunt Dee in Tanasket, Washington. They seem to have had their fill of traveling, they had one child, our cousin, Tad, and they stayed put. Aunt Dee was a wonderful cook and she got a job as a cook.

But with our family, they travel had just begun. They headed Southwest and got to the Coos Bay area, much to the delight of Aunt Berchion who had the chance to get together with Uncle Cliff. Then off they went. The whole rest of the next two years was pretty much a nightmare. None of the children quite remember when and where they were at any given time. They crossed the Mojave Desert before there were roads there, but only sticks to indicate where they had to go. Whenever school started, they would stop and the children would go to school, but with the first vacation they would be off again, sometimes they went to three different schools in a year. They panned for gold in the Mount Lassen region. Pop still had three of the nuggets that he had kept from that era, but of course, they were lost over the course of time. They spent a couple months in Needles, California, where pop claimed it was so hot you could fry an egg on the fender of the car. I know how hot it was and he was not exaggerating. Bob and I were down there once in early September, it was four o’clock and the people were just getting up from the afternoon nap which occurred between one and four. It was 115 degrees at the time, we felt like we were dying and would not have opposed death at the time. Remember, there was no air conditioning at the time. But what the children remembered was driving and driving and driving, endless driving. The only one who made the whole thing possible was Grandma Alice. She had a wonderful sense of humor and did her best to keep everyone amused. The children all adored her and everyone said that they would name their first daughter after her and they did. The daughter of Aunt Noma was Alice Pauline, even though we all her Pauline, Aunt Berchion’s daughter was Marlene Alice, and pop’s oldest daughter was Louise Alice. Poor Grandma Alice, she must have really suffered. When you look at her old pictures, you can see she was suffering from a thyroid problem, she is overweight and her goiter is prominent, but in the good old days, thyroid problems went undetected. At one point when they were driving, they got word that a relative was dying in Tanasket (not a blood relative of ours), and so they headed there as fast as they good with grandpa screaming the whole time at Aunt Berchion. Suddenly, the car backfired, and grandpa said, no sense in hurrying, that was our relative, an old woman by the way, and she has just told us that she had died. So everyone looked at the time and when they got there, sure enough, she had died at about the time that they had thought she had. Grandpa Sam had the gift of second sight so he knew things things. Aunt Berchion and my father all took that at face value, but mom always just rolled her eyes at that and the very idea that he had the gift of second sight. She didn’t think the first house was haunted, either, those were rats. Now this. Some time during the course of time, they went to Cheney, Washington, a small town just outside of Spokane, school was starting, and he bought a theater. I do not know how grandpa kept up his violin, but somehow he did and he took lessons from a woman professor at the local university, now Easter Washington University, in those days, Cheney Normal. He was outstanding and so it was decided that when he turned fourteen, he would got to a music school Leipzig, Germany.

To be continued.