A True Story 1947 Preston Idaho 12-1-12
A Christmas story
The La Hacienda Fine Dining Cafe
My name is Sister Holiday. I woke up on a cold December morning in the year 1947 with seven hungry babies and a driving snow storm outside, six cents in the match box, and my husband gone. My boys ranged from three months to seven years; their sister was two. Their Dad had never been much more than a presence they feared. Whenever they heard his wagon wheels crunch on the gravel outside they would scramble to hide under their beds with the older boys running to safety out the back door. Now that he had decided to leave, there would be no more beatings, but no dollar a week to buy groceries.
If there was a welfare system in effect in southern eastern Idaho at that time, I knew nothing about it. I scrubbed my younger kids until they looked brand new and then put on my best homemade dress, loaded them into my old hay wagon, harnessed up the two tired looking old work horses, and went to town in search of a job in a raging storm the thick snow was blowing in gusts.
The eight of us stopped at every factory, store and restaurant in town. The kids stayed “crammed” low below the side boards of the wagon and tried to be quiet while I tried to convince whoever would listen that I was willing to learn or do anything. No luck. I had to have a job!
The last chance to get a job on the way home and that was still open was the La Hacienda Fine Dining Café on the corner of Main Street and Oneida. It was a melting spot for the locals. Mr. Todd Pritchett and Mr. Tom Gormley owned the place ever since a local Taxidermist by the name of Allen Broderick sold the building to them. Todd and Tom had to do major remodel to get it up to code for serving food. They did all the work. It took them nine months working night and day before they could have an opening. The walls had horse hair and plaster had to be replaced with lath and plaster. A restraunt couldn’t use horse hair. The manager of the Isis Theater helped Todd use sawdust and plaster to get the same effect as was on walls of the theater. For the cement floors Todd used and an “ultra tec method” he learned at the Logan Vocational school. For the booths he got out of a bowling alley going out of business in Idaho Falls which he upholstered. Tables and chairs came from a Mexican restruaunt on 25th Street in Ogden that had closed. These he hand painted. Parking in the back alley was asphalted.
That’s where I stepped down from the wagon and went inside. My last chance for the day to get a job. With a worried look on my face, I asked Todd if he could use any help. He peeked out of the window at all those kids. He studied me, and the wagon, his eyes rolling back and forth, nothing for a minute. “Need a job yu say?” Another thoughtful pause, while massaging his goatee, “I could use you to clean up and care for this place between 7 to 4pm.” I could pay you 5 cents an hour and you can start tomorrow. I thanked him. That was the biggest luck in the world and I started to cry as I left the café. My two sorrow work horses loped us home while my oldest boy Darnell held the rains and we all facing a head wind, as fast as they ever went, it was called racing for the barn.
As soon as got home, I pulled the cord on my telephone, turned the dial to 3 rings, lifted my finger and Sister Peterson answered on the third ring. She lived a half mile away in a small 1 room newly white washed house that had many years before been a storage granary. I bargained with her to come and babysit for 10 cents a day. She could arrive when the older kids were leaving for school and I was leaving for work. This seemed like a good arrangement to her, so we made the deal. That night when we circled the kitchen bench and knelt to say our prayers, I thanked the Lord for finding Mommy a job.
And so I started at The La Hacienda Fine Dining. When I got home at 5: PM I sent the baby- sitter home with 10 pennies of tip money—fully half of what I averaged every day. As the days went by, heating bills added a strain to my meager wage. The tires on the old wagon had the consistency of penny balloons and began to leak, more so because the roads were gravel. I had to fill them with air on the way to work and again in the evening before I could go home.
One bleak fall morning, I dragged myself to the car to go home and found four tires in the back seat. New tires! There was no note, nothing, and just those beautiful brand new tires. Had angels taken up residence in the land of Egypt? I made a deal with Clark Leishman the owner of the local Chevron Service Station, exchange for his mounting the new tires, I would clean up his office and service bays. I remember it took me a lot longer to scrub his floor than it did for him to do the tires.
I was now working six days instead of five and it still wasn't enough. Christmas was only three days away and I knew there would be no money for toys for the kids. I found a can of red paint and started repairing and painting some old toys. Then I hid them in the basement so there would be something for Santa to deliver on Christmas morning. Clothes were a worry too. I was sewing patches on top of patches on the boy’s pants and soon they would be too far gone to repair. On the day before Christmas the usual customers, the regulars all just sat around and talked that day. The Oneida County trooper Capt. Wes Goldsberry, Bern ell Jensen, Don Anderson was drinking coffee. There Les, Frank, and Jim, and others, and a few musicians were hanging around after a gig at the Legion and some were dropping nickels in the pinball machine.
Then I left to get home before the sun went down. It was a little after 4 o'clock. To my amazement, my old battered wagon was filled full to the top of the side boards with boxes of all shapes and sizes. I quickly stepped up on the driver's bench turned around facing the glorious wrapped presents. Reaching down, I pulled off the lid of a box. Inside was whole case of little blue jeans, sizes 2-10! I looked inside another box: It was full of shirts to go with the jeans. Then I peeked inside some of the other boxes. There was candy and nuts and bananas and bags of groceries. There was an enormous ham for baking, and canned vegetables and potatoes, pudding and Jell-O, cookies, pie filling and flour. There was whole bag of laundry supplies and cleaning items, and there was five toy trucks and one beautiful little doll, a ceramic jar with $12.79, and more. As I drove back through the street as the sun was setting slowly on the most amazing Christmas Eve of my life, I was sobbing with gratitude. And I will never forget the joy on the faces of my precious little ones that morning.
Yes, there were angels in Preston Idaho, and they all hung out at The La Hacienda Fine Dining Café.
To read more of Karl’s stories go to: karlwallaceblog.blogspot.com
