My first memory of a home, back about 1933 or 1934, was on what was called a desert improvement claim. This was in western Wyoming, twenty miles or so south of Thermopolis, and the homestead ran up into the hills in rugged wild country. On the hilly east side of our property there was a cutting for the railroad.

A crew had gone up and down the tracks, taking out the ties that were beginning to deteriorate and putting in new ones. They just tossed the old ones over the side, to be burned later. Dad got permission from the foreman to salvage them.

Dad used those ties to build our cabin. He dug it right into the hillside that protected it on the west and north sides from the cold winter winds that blew through there. The area lived up to its name of Wind River. There was a wind blowing most of the time, and during the winter that wind would be thirty below zero. I don't know what the chill factor woulda been.

The cabin had three rooms, the kitchen in the middle, Mother and Dad's bedroom on the east, and another bedroom on the west. Off the north side of the kitchen was a small cellar to keep stuff reasonably cool, like vegetables, potatoes, and, when we had it, meat.

The roof was made of ties laid at a slight angle covered with sheet metal found in the town dump, laid up sort of like shingles. Over the top of that was clay, about four to six inches of it, and then sand on top of that. This carried away almost all of the rain. Now and then in a bad storm we'd get a few leaks.

Sounds crude, don't it? But it was warm in the winter when those cold winds blew across the river and up through the trees. We had plenty of firewood there, and we had a wood stove in the kitchen, and in my mother's bedroom a fifty gallon barrel with the doors-and-all of a pot-belly stove riveted to it. You could lift the top of that and put in a great big chunk of wood on top of a hot fire and that wood would burn almost all night, kept the place nice and warm.

Dad and my brothers would gather deadwood, split it for firewood, & take it to town to sell it to get the money for flour and sugar and lard and gasoline.

As for clothing, my mother made most of our clothes on a foot-treadled sewing machine. The bags that the flour came in often had patterns printed on them, and she made shirts for us boys and dresses for the girls, and cut down discarded clothes for our trousers.

My brothers and sisters and I had discovered a lookout point up on the hillside, where we'd have a great view of the train coming through the cutting. We could look right into the cabin of the engine when it passed.

The engineer enjoyed breaking the monotony of his day, too. He'd see us coming, he'd salute us with his whistle, wave to us as he went by, and we'd wave back and watch him pass, then go back down to the house.

One Christmas he tooted long and loud. We ran up the hill to our lookout. There came the train. We saw the engineer swinging a burlap bag out the window, around and around, winding up. As he approached the cut, he tossed the sack.

That bag was just full of toys and clothes and stuff that we couldn't afford. That was like Santa Claus riding a train.

After that, you can bet we never missed waving to our friend, the engineer!

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As told to his daughter.