One night, 280 years of Baker County stories

Nellie Langlitz hated milking cows, especially in the cold.

So did Fred Warner Sr.

As for Myrtle Petersen, her least favorite choir was cutting firewood — with a crosscut saw.

These three, all lifetime residents of Baker County, shared their memories during a special history program Monday night at the Baker Heritage Museum. The event was sponsored by the Baker County Historical Society.

About 80 people crammed into the room to hear these three talk — and they have quite a few stories from their years of living.

Nellie is 99, Myrtle turns 99 on Feb. 25, and Fred is 83.

First, they talked about their roots.

Myrtle’s father came to Oregon in 1904 from Missouri (she and Nellie pronounce it “Missoura.”)

“He came because he had a couple cousins here,” Myrtle said.

He went back, married her mother, and they returned to settle in New Bridge, near Richland.

As for Fred, his family “came here to get away from the Civil War” in 1864.

“Half of them were thinking about the South and half of them were thinking about the North, so he loaded them up,” he said of his great-great-grandfather.

His great-grandma was 16 when they came across the Oregon Trail.

“One of her brothers walked the whole way,” he said.

They settled north of Baker on a 320-acre homestead.

“The place we call the Parker home, he (his great-grandfather) won in a poker game,” Fred said. “We’ve had eight generations live on that piece of ground.”

Nellie’s family came in 1849 in a covered wagon from Missouri, and later homesteaded in Hereford, where she grew up.

“My dad bought a ranch on Denny Creek,” she said.

And just what amenities were in those homestead houses?

Myrtle answered first.

Indoor plumbing?

“Oh, dear no,” she said.

What about a telephone?

“Oh no,” she said.

Then Fred: “We didn’t get electricity till I was 27 years old.”

“We had no electricity, running water or phone,” Nellie said.

And chores were just a part of life.

“We all had chores, after 5 or 6 years old,” Myrtle said.

“The chores were milking cows, working in the garden, baling hay,” Nellie said.

School for all three started in a one-room schoolhouse near their homes.

“Sometimes we had 10 kids, sometimes we had two,” Fred said of the Fairview School, which is now the Grange Hall in Haines.

Nellie went to the Lockhart School.

“And we rode horses to school,” she said.

When asked about a day in their teenage lives, Myrtle instead tells about her first trip to Baker City when she was 11. Her father was bringing a wagonload of tomatoes in to sell.

The trip took two days. They left New Bridge at daylight, spent the first night at a place on Ruckles Creek and arrived in Baker at noon the next day.

She was especially enamored of the diamond rings and bracelets, and “spent the whole time in the dime store.”

Here’s a snapshot of Fred at 16: “Well, I played football, milked cows every morning, hayed — then if I had time I chased girls.”

And there were dances, of course.

“Pretty soon they brought in beer and moonshine and fights. That was about the end of that,” Nellie said.

Myrtle remembers attending a dance when she was 12 to accompany her 16-year-old sister.

“I watched them the whole time. I thought their heads were touching, and I was going to tell mama!” she said.

For fashion, most women wore their hair long unless they “bobbed” it short. And there were curling irons, but “a lot of people got burned,” Myrtle said with a smile.

The three didn’t recall many memorable clothing fads, except for how boys treated jeans.

“The boys never washed their Levi’s,” Fred said. “They just wore them out.”

All three lived through the Great Depression.

“I’ve seen bread lines. I’ve seen people hungry,” Fred said. “They walked from the railroad to the house, looking for work. Good people.”

Myrtle and Nellie didn’t recall being affected by the Depression because they had ample gardens, as well as livestock and chickens.

“We were really poor, but didn’t know it,” Myrtle said. “We were never short of food.”

“We had all our own meat, chickens and eggs, milk, cream and butter,” Nellie said. “We’d help the neighbors with whatever we could give.” (She still lives on her ranch north of Baker City, by the way.)

She also remembers her father would buy supplies every fall to sustain the family through the winter.

“Everything. Mostly beans,” she said.

And many sacks of flour — Oregon Beauty brand — that provided a source of fabric when the flour was gone.

“Mom would take the sacks and bleach them for curtains, towels...”

“And underwear,” Myrtle added.

Next came the question of their spouses and how they met.

“At a dance — that’s one dance I shouldn’t have gone to,” Myrtle said, smiling when her response drew laughter from the crowd.

Nellie also met her husband at a dance, where he was providing the fiddle music.

As for Fred: “Well, I’ve had two, and I’ve got along really good with both of them.”

He met his first wife, Betty, at an ice skating party.

“We got on the Baldock Slough and could just go forever,” he said.

She passed away from a brain tumor, and he later met his second wife, Barbara, through his daughter-in-law.

“We’ve been fightin’ ever since,” he said with a grin.

Changing times

They all said the towns of their childhood homes have changed a bit.

“It’s disappeared,” Myrtle said of New Bridge.

“The main thing that really stands out is after they built Mason Dam (in the late 1960s), Baker became green,” Fred said.

“We used to have four feet of snow, 30 below,” Nellie said.

“Global warming,” Fred added with a smile.

To wrap up the evening, each was asked how they’d like to be remembered, or what they’d like people to know.

“Just that I love everybody and want everybody to be happy,” Myrtle said.

“I tried to, in my lifetime, work to preserve the heritage of Baker,” Fred said. (That may be a hint to the younger generation to keep history alive.)

And Nellie: “Remember me as an old ranch woman.”