The four oldest children with
their grandmother, Anna Fries

Gram and some of the children moved into an abandoned shack in the woods not too far from a crossroads store called Johnson’s Corner, in the rural community of Weyerhaeuser, Washington. She sent Lois and Ellen to stay with her brother Emil and his wife Nettie, in Vancouver.

Gram recounted many stories from this time in her life. How she made do with a bit of welfare money, welfare having been recently introduced, and traded milk from their cow for other staples at Johnson’s Corner.

Once someone gave them a pig and remembering from her childhood how hogs had been butchered, she, Ingwer, and Richard scalded, scraped, and butchered the pig.