Grandma Read

This is my great-grandmother, Irene King Read. She was born on August 21, 1876. I never knew her, but she wrote a memoir about her life titled "Sense and Nonsense" 😁. I read it when I was a young girl and I've felt like I've "known" her ever since. At one point in her life her husband was a sheep farmer and they lived in a very small town Oreana, Idaho, 75 miles from civilization. Grandma Read was a vivacious woman with many talents-- she could sing, play the piano, and write.

When she moved to the small town of Oreana her husband said to her, "I hope, Mama, that you and the children will try and be content in Oreana for a while."
“What about school, church, and entertainment?” she replied.
“There’s a nice little school house—a lady teacher, but no church, and we’ll have to furnish our own entertainment.”
And furnish she DID!
She played the organ and sang for weddings and dances, and delivered others’ babies—five in all! For despite our isolated condition, she said, "life must go on, just with fewer characters!" 😂
"A Dramatic Club was organized, and we put on plays such as the one featured in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” We put on one at the schoolhouse, to a capacity crowd. It was a lot of fun and a lot of laughs.
To advertise for our baseball team, I wrote a column for the “Owyhee Avalanche.” The editor and all of my friends insisted I continue as the reporter for Oreana. And so I became a columnist for two or three years!
Finally after 22 years, our “short stay” in Oreana ended. The dear editor of the Avalanche stated, “We regret to announce the last contribution by Mrs. Read, who’s newsy letters, quaint sayings and humor have been looked forward to and enjoyed each week from San Diego to Portland, Maine.”
I'm so grateful my great-grandma wrote about her life for me to read about, 145 years after her birth. There was a lot to admire about how she lived her life all of those years ago, but one of the things I am most drawn to about her was just how she made things happen. No entertainment? No problem! She was spunky and exciting and made life fun for herself and others! She made her own sunshine. I hope to follow her example.