Looking to your family’s past can give you hope for the future
In the spring of 1934, gold was discovered in Warland, Montana. The vein, which was wide and rich, assayed at $40 a ton, according to the Daily Interlake of Kalispell. It was one of the largest finds ever. It ran right under our house.
We didn’t own the tar-paper shack we lived in. The railroad did. I missed the excitement because that was the year when I spent most of my time asleep in the top drawer of the bedroom dresser. I’m trying to catch up now.
One of my favorite and most encouraging hobbies for these COVID-19 times has become searching old newspapers to catch up on what I missed that first year of my life, asleep in the top drawer. If you want your spirits lifted, I recommend it — reading the papers, not sleeping in the top drawer. Don’t read the world news. Catch up on what was happening in your backyard and in your own family. In those days, everything was in the papers.
Just this week I discovered the astonishing story that my Aunt Rose, a genial, fluffy lady with an addiction to Camel cigarettes, created quite a stir and revealed unexpected talents by inventing a safety bathmat with suction cups on the bottom. Believe it or not, this handy item had not existed before. But it’s right here in the paper. In fact all of the newspapers across the Northwest in May 1934 reported the news when Rose Franco returned to Warland from Seattle where she had presented her invention to 17,000 members at the Inventors Society Convention. According to the Seattle Post Intelligencer, several manufacturers were interested.
A follow-up story in the venerable Billings Gazette said that Rose was inspired to create the safety bathmat because she read the story of “an eastern woman who involuntarily became a nudist when she slipped on a cake of soap in her bathtub and pitched headlong through a window.” Really.
The Gazette goes on to detail my aunt’s reaction to this remarkable event.
“’Huh. I’ll fix that’,” said Mrs. Rose Franco wife of a Warland, Mont. railroad engineer, when she read the incident in her favorite newspaper.” (Presumably the Gazette)
The paper does not say why Aunt Rose decided to involve herself in the plight of the naked lady in Omaha. Many questions are left unanswered. For instance: How on earth did they get 17,000 inventors to a conference in Seattle in 1934?
I was stunned when I read the story. I didn’t even know Aunt Rose had a bathtub. I didn’t know she had a bathroom, so I never had the chance to see the vacuum cups that held her invention firmly to the floor of the tub. “You can still see them today in the better motels,” my son observed helpfully.
In my house, we heated water on top of the wood stove and poured it into a galvanized iron washtub with a very rough bottom. We did this on Saturday nights or as needed. It wasn’t needed too often.
If you want to lift your spirits, renew confidence in the future, and greet the New Year in a positive frame of mind, the best thing I can suggest is that you go back in time and read the newspapers for the days when you were asleep in the top drawer.. Maybe your Aunt Rose invented something with suction cups on the bottom.
Go to 1918 and the stories of the Spanish flu are so similar to the stories in today’s news. In Wallace, Idaho, people refusing to wear masks were threatened with arrest. Across the state, schools and churches were closed, but lodge events were being held outside. Camp Lewis sent recruits home. “Your fate may be in your own hands,” read the Seattle Star, “Wash them before eating.”
We’ve been here before and, somehow, we’ll get through it this time, too. When my Number Three son (birth order, not quality of life) was 5 years old, he was given a hand-embroidered handkerchief. It is beautiful, he said. “I will use it only for drying happy tears.”
For Christmas this year, I received a certificate from my youngest son, promising that he will listen to my good advice on any subject once a month for a year. He doesn’t have to take the advice, he is just committed to listen. Still that’s progress.
It’s time to go bravely into this new year, with hope for the future and an eye on the past, listening to wise advice and crying only happy tears. And from now on, I’d recommend just using the top drawer for socks.
Where to find Dorothy in January
2 p.m. Jan. 7: The Book Doctors, a Zoom virtual event. A panel of authors gives tips for getting a book from idea to print.
9 a.m. Jan. 11 and 25: Coffee Chat (and change the world). Special guests, resources and fun.
Register for these events at https://Mygenerationgap.com. Questions? Email Dorothy@mygenerationgap.com
Also, catch Dorothy’s podcast, Swimming Upstream Radio Show, at https://Itsnevertoolate.com
Contact Dorothy at 800-548-9264 or Dorothy @itsnevertoolate.com.
This story was originally published January 3, 2021 at 5:45 AM.