Gloria:  So my grandma was Louise Stuber Quade, and she was born 1897 in Sylvan Grove, Kansas. The fact was she was only four when her mother passed away. Her mother must have only taught her how to peel potatoes, you know, and do some simple cooking. When we went to the farm to visit her, she always had hot dogs because they were easy to cook.

So anyway, let me go back now to where my grandma and my grandpa met.  In St. Louis before World War I, my grandma was done with her schooling and she was a nanny for a very reputable family. My grandpa was a chauffeur for a very wealthy family, and his family sponsored Charles Lindbergh on many of his flights, cross country flights. When he would come to this family and he had places to go or meetings or whatever, my grandpa would chauffeur him.

And my grandma was a nanny. When the adults did adult things, my grandma would take the kids to the park or to the zoo or wherever. And my grandpa had to drive them because he was the chauffeur. So that is how they met.

And then came World War I, and my grandpa had to go to the war. He was in a motor patrol. He wasn't part of the infantry or marching. And wherever he was at, they got bombed with poisonous gas in France. So he came home, and he looked up my grandma. And she was still single, so they got married. This was in 1920.

And my grandfather was very, very ill. The war just destroyed his lungs, so he had to go a lot to the hospital. But when they lived in St. Louis, it was no big deal. There was an attorney, and he consulted my grandpa. He said, “you need to go out West where there isn't all the manufacturing and all the smoke and smog and everything.”

So they applied and got a homestead. And here is the telegram that they got from Western Union. It says, Torrington, Wyoming. That's where they were supposed to go. And it says, they had to be there within the next seven days! They came in a Model A Station Wagon. My grandpa's brother came with him, and my grandma, she had just had twins!

They stopped in Sylvan Grove, Kansas, and my grandma stayed there with the twins. Because there was nothing in Wyoming. My grandpa had ordered some wood. Both my grandpas ordered wood and had it come by rail. I don't know how they got it, because they only had a station wagon, but they built a house and a barn. Not long after, my grandma arrived there with the twins. They got a team of horses, and they had to clear the land because of the sage brush and all of that. And my grandma would put the two babies (the twins) in the buggy and pushed it up this lane, this muddy poopy lane. I can only imagine how many times she slipped taking twins with her when she went to milk the milk cow.

So anyway, after they lived there for probably, maybe a year, my grandpa decided it would be better to have the house up on the top where the land was flat so that my grandma could just walk across to the barn, like the barn would be from here to there. My grandma said she couldn't watch! They put wood underneath and hitched the house up to the horses and, and drove the horses. They had to go across the bridge and then go up this lane. They literally moved the house.

Anyway, after that my grandpa got a little bit better and they got the house up then it made it easier for her. But then my grandma was pregnant again.

Nancy: No break!

Gloria: She had three chicken houses that were probably a hundred chickens in each, and she sold eggs. So they had milk and eggs. They helped people during the Great Depression. She had milk, eggs, and tomatoes she could share with the neighbors. Eventually, my grandpa got battery-operated lights that he put in the barn, so she had light when she was milking the cow.

Nancy: We don't even think about it being dark in addition to cold.

Gloria: I said to my cousin, “oh, I would have just sat in the middle of the floor--and the babies would be running around--and would just cry.” You know? Because they had no electricity. She had no transportation. And the neighbors were all way far away. I just don't know how she did it.

Note: The transcript above has been condensed from its original audio recording to improve the flow and readability of the story.