PART SEVEN Oral Histories and Family Memoirs - Mountain Light ...

As a boy growing up near Endicott, I would often visit my Great Aunts
Mae Geier and Lizzie Repp as I enjoyed hearing their tales and humorous
stories of life in pioneer days, but I was not aware of many incidents Aunt Mae
relates in her poignant memoir about our family and her own challenging
circumstances as a child and young mother. I remember her love of music and
hearing her play the treasured old pump organ she kept in her living room.
Reading her story brings to mind a clear boyhood memory I have regarding
something I did not comprehend at the time. I often sang at church and one
time for Mother‟s Day I shared the rather obscure tune, “Nobody Knows But
Mother.” At the distance of almost half-century I don‟t remember all the
verses, but among them are these lines: “Nobody knows of the work it takes,
to keep a home together; nobody knows of the steps it takes, nobody knows
but Mother. Nobody knows of the anxious fears, lest children may not
weather, the storms of life in after years, nobody knows but Mother.” While
singing this song before the congregation, I noticed that Aunt Mae became
extremely emotional and this concerned me. I was relieved when she made a
point of coming up to me after the service to say how much she appreciated
the words of the song. I knew she was safeguarding personal memories, and
am grateful that she took time to enrich our lives by writing this story in
tribute to the power of God‟s overcoming grace.
I, Mary Katherine (Mae) Scheuerman was born December 25, 1888 at Newton, Kansas. The
winters there were very cold. While still a young child one morning my Mother came to pick me up, but
found I was frozen to the wall. I came to Washington with my parents at the age of two. We lived in
Endicott a number of years, later moving to a farm five miles from here, which is still the Scheuerman
farm. I remember one day while we lived here in town. There were three families living in one house, it
was a section house owned by the railroad located along tracks. The three families were my parents, one
Litzenberger family, and my oldest sister and husband, Adam Lust. My brother, Karl Scheuerman, was
born there.
In another section house our neighbor William Huntley lived. One day Mr. Huntley was cutting
up meat or something. I was curious about what he was doing with that knife. Evidently I got too close to
him, and he warned me he would cut my head off if I came any closer. I ran to our house and hid in an old
trunk for the whole day, till I got hungry enough to come out and eat. I stayed home after that.
After we moved to the farm I attended the Litzenberger School. 1 There I got my eighth grade
education. My last teacher was Bertha Hutchison. Those years of school, after walking in snow a foot
deep to and from school, I had house work and milk cows. Sister Lena and I had to herd pigs in the
summer after harvest was over. While the pigs were eating up the wheat around the hay stack, we would
slide down the stalks and have fun while the animals were filling up, then return with them.
Our cows were pasturing on the road as far as Matlock Bridge. 2 My sister and I brought them
home evenings to milk. We would stop along the road to pick flowers, buttercups, daisies, and such, and
sometimes there would be a big full moon up before we got home. Those days were peaceful and quiet.
After the milking was done and the meal over, going to sleep in the upstairs attic was no problem on the
old straw-filled ticks.
I also started Sunday school in our school before we had a Lutheran Church in Endicott. Services
were held in the Litzenberger Schoolhouse. After public school I attended German day school in a little
house on the Adam Lust ranch for four weeks. By that time it had become quite hot. Sister and I walked
to the German school, a distance of about four miles. When it got too warm inside, we went outside of the
building along the ditch where we had our singing lessons. Our teacher was Pastor Horn 3 , who drove out
from Endicott with a buggy and horse. Sometimes we all piled into the buggy and on the horse and drove
to the Palouse River for a swim or just wading in the water to cool off.
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