Mina Christine Arnold Young
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Edited by: Charles Young |
Mina has lived in Montana, Wyoming, and Missouri. In 1950 she married Dayton Young, and moved to Fort Smith, Arkansas. They had 5 children. As a young woman, she worked a few years as THE school teacher at various rural schools. Some of those were not even one-room school houses -- there was no school house. School was held in places like a bunkhouse.
Mina was involved in the start up of the Newcastle, Wyoming Assembly of God Church. She was the first charter member.
Mina worked at the Gospel Publishing House in Springfield, Missouri for several years. She has done a lot of writing and has published a short novel -- Jeannie of the 2-Bar-A . Much of her writing has been educational materials and learning games. She no longer sells that material, but you can read some of it on her web page.
BIRTH: I was born in Billings, Montana in 1913. I weighed 6 1/2 pounds when I was born. I had blond hair and blue eyes. Dr. Storey came out to our house to deliver me.
PAPA'S STORY: Papa's hair was completely white ever since I was old enough to notice or remember. The story Papa told that I liked the very best was about Charlie Ross. Charlie Ross was a little boy who belonged to a very rich family in New York State, or at least somewhere "back east," a long time ago. When he was 4 or 5 years old he was kidnapped. No one ever heard of him again.
My Papa was born in New York state a long time ago. He had been an orphan and had been adopted. His name was Charlie. Maybe my Papa was Charlie Ross! Maybe some relatives would find him and then we'd have lots of money!
The summer of 1914 Uncle Henry Stenberg came to visit. He was killed in an accident not long after that.
SHOTGUN HOUSE: Probably before I was 3 we moved out to east of Billings. I remember that house. It was what is sometimes called a "shotgun house" with 5 rooms in a row. I did not hear that term until later in life. In the winter we only lived in two or three rooms to save fuel. Sometimes we would move to the other end of the house. We probably had a little less than an acre of land. We had a barn, some sheds, and an outdoor toilet. We got our water from a faucet on a pipe that stuck up at the southwest corner of the lot near the road that went in front of our house. Traffic in those days was mostly buggies, with once in a while a car. I remember sitting in a high chair while Mom was washing dishes. She would put a plate on the high chair tray and give me a dish towel and I would "help" by drying the plate.
OUR HORSE: We had a small horse named Barney that we drove with a buggy when we wanted to go somewhere. When I was about 4 years old we had been somewhere off the road, and the mud piled up on the buggy wheels. My Dad got out and walked, and I felt pretty big to be driving at 4 years of age. The horse couldn't have run away if he wanted to because there was so much mud on the wheels. Besides the horse and dog, we had chickens, sometimes rabbits, and assorted cats.
As I got a little older I really did drive the buggy. I had a little problem out on the road one time. A car was coming, and the horse was afraid of it. My Mother was afraid to drive Barney and I wasn't. That ended when I was 9 and moved to Newcastle, Wyoming.
PROSPERITY: Papa was prosperous for a while. Just before I left Wyoming, my uncle Fred said that when I was a year old we lived in a nice house in Billings. All I remember is the shotgun house out past the edge of town. I think that my father's business partner cheated him out of most of his property. He was suspicious of people -- probably because he had been cheated.
Papa quoted poetry and read lots of classical literature. He checked books out of the library and read to us from Jean Stratton Porter's books - Michael O'Haloren was one book I remember. Papa admired the classic poet / writer Milton. He did not have a middle name until he took Milton as his middle name.
HOME CHURCH: We did not go to church when we lived at Billings. Papa was a Baptist, and there was no Baptist church there. So we stayed at home and had our own services. We read the Bible and prayed every day anyway, but on Sunday we would often sing church songs too. Mama's folks were all Seventh Day Adventists, but it did not rub off on her. The neighbors took me to church one Sunday morning and they baptized a baby.
ONLY CHILD: I was a very lonesome little kid. There was one other house near us (just east), and it was usually empty or had only grownups, or maybe a couple with a baby in it. One time there was a family with girls, two or three of them a little older than me. Whenever I went to play with them they mostly told me tall tales about people who laid eggs and various other objects. I think my mother found out about it and was not too anxious for me to play with them.
NEIGHBORS: When I was 7 or 8 years old, about the time I started school, a couple named Burns moved into that house. They had a 5 year old boy named Bobby, and we were together every minute we possibly could be. We called ourselves the "Katzenjammer kids" after our favorite comic strip characters Hans and Fritz who were always getting into some kind of trouble. We convinced ourselves that we didn't have to mind anyone at those times, and it's a wonder we didn't get into serious trouble.
There was an old brick kiln just east of Bobby Burns' house, and although bricks hadn't been made there for years, there were still hundreds of them in big piles. Of course we were supposed to stay off the brick piles, but we didn't. Our parents soon found out what was going on and explained what could happen if the bricks started to fall. We realized that we could have been badly hurt or even killed. We found other ways to play.
For a while we attended Sunday School at the neighbor's house. Maybe that was when the Burns family lived there. Then one Sunday afternoon the neighbor hitched up a wagon and went after a load of hay. Dad didn't think much of them if they would work on Sunday, so we quit going to their Sunday School. They may have been the folks who had the team of sorrel horses named Ginger and May. Sometimes I was invited to ride in the wagon pulled by those horses.
MEAN ROOSTER: We had a very mean white rooster. I had to stop gathering the eggs for Mama, because every time I went into the barn he pecked my legs. He couldn't get at Mama's legs, because she wore long skirts down to her shoe tops. One day I was riding Barney around the yard and decided to get even with that rooster. I wanted to ride up close to him and yell at him, and laugh at him because he couldn't get at me. But Barney found something he wanted to eat, and when I slapped him with the reins he kicked up his heels and went on eating. I don't remember now whether I fell off or just wound up with my arms around Barney's neck hanging on. Anyway I didn't get to pester Whitey that day. But he got what was coming to him a little later. Mama was bending over a nest in the barn reaching for eggs, when Whitey flew up on her back and started pecking her. We had stewed chicken shortly after that. He was awfully tough!
HENS: Someone gave me a little yellow bantam hen. She sang a lot, "kee, kee, kee," so I called her Biddykeekee. One day I heard crowing, when we didn't have a rooster anywhere around. I checked it out, and my little hen was crowing! Mama told me there was an old saying, "Whistling girls and crowing hens always come to some bad ends." I decided that meant me and Biddykeekee.
We had a red hen (what you could call a pale red) that we called Rosey. She disappeared for a week, and we thought some dog had gotten her. Then one day I looked down the toilet hole, and she was walking around down there! Papa put the rake handle down by her, at a slant, and she walked up it. She was very thin, but in a few days she was her old cheerful self.
ELK: We lived about a quarter mile east of the edge of town. Perhaps a half mile east of us was the fairgrounds. They used to keep a few wild animals out there. They decided they couldn't afford to keep their elk, so they just turned her out to fend for herself. She stayed near our place quite a bit. I was fascinated by that big animal, and wanted her for a pet. I named her "Rosebud" and talked to her whenever I had a chance. She seemed to like the sound of my voice, and let me get quite close sometimes. She wouldn't eat out of my hand though.
CHIPMUNK: One day the dog caught a chipmunk. It wasn't very badly hurt, and we kept it for a pet. It looked so cute when it was eating, standing up and holding its food with those tiny paws. We'd let it run around the house sometimes. One day it didn't want to be caught and put back in its cage, so Papa put his hat on the floor, leaning against the wall, and the chipmunk ran behind it to hide. Papa put his hands down on both sides of the hat, but the little fellow had started on out, and Papa accidentally hit him and killed him. We all felt terrible about that.