#52 STORIES OF ME...week six

I used to know the story of how my Grandpa and Grandma Huggins met.  I do know they went in a buckboard wagon from Riverton, Utah, to the Manti Temple to be married in the 1890's..   However, I haven't read Grandma's journal for several years, and when I tried to locate it I was not as successful as I imagined I would be.  No other details come to mind but that one.

If I ever knew the story of how my Grandpa and Grandma Crane met, I have definitely forgotten that one.  I know Grandma was just a little bit of a woman, girl really as it was the day before her 17th birthday.  Can't remember much about Grandpa Crane other than my mother used to be in awe that he was SIX FEET TALL!  Well my mother's husband was 6 foot 2 inches.  So, Grandpa Crane's height was only a little above average, I would suspect.

But, I DO know the story of how my parents met.  I read an article a few years ago about writing family history.  The advice was make the story live!  Put in details, snippets of conversation, and draw the characters out in word with enough description of the senses: scent, sight, color, etc., to make the whole piece interesting.

I thought to myself, I can do that!  I was writing the February issue of the Nichols Family News newsletter and decided to try my hand at something a little more creative.  This was the result...I hope you can see the broad strokes as well as the little wisps of feathering descriptions which describe this rather romantic little vinette.

(Again, I apologize for the change in font and typeset.  I imported the picture and the copy from the Nichols Family Newsletter, February 2012, and this is the result--without any way (that I know of on this STUPID WINDOWS 10 software) to rotate the picture or standardize the print.

IN THE BEGINNING….

Melvin R. Huggins  (Meb)

and Maude Marie Crane  

Summer 1922

He spotted her as soon as their horses moved into the clearing at the sheep camp.  You might think it would be the tantalizing smell of food—and sharp appetite—that drew his attention to the long table set up in the shade.  But it wasn’t.  It was the pretty girl with the short dark hair and the snapping brown eyes who had caught his interest.  Meb Huggins leaned over in the saddle and, pointing to the young woman who was filling huge platters with meat, simply said to the other sheep herder who had accompanied him into camp, “I’m going to marry that girl someday.”  Milt Crane laughed.  “That’s my cousin Maude,” he said.

It was 1922.  Nineteen year-old Maude Crane and her sister Alice were the cooks for their uncles’ sheep outfit that summer.  Alice was only two years older but the two of them were already skilled at putting on a big meal for a lot of hungry people.  Of course, there were some challenges at having to cook everything over an open fire, but the two young women were more than just average cooks.  And the men employed by the Crane Brothers appreciated the welcome change from mutton stew and whatever other simple food items they could prepare in their small sheep wagons at campsites all over south-western Wyoming and south-eastern Idaho.  These sheepherders were moving all the herds of sheep to the summer range, so their time in the main camp was also a welcome respite from the solitary lives they had lived all winter with only the sheep for company.  For most of the young men, it was also an opportunity for card playing and contests of physical strength as well as the satisfaction of a “home-cooked” meal.  For Meb Huggins that summer day, it was the start of a life-time love affair with the pretty girl who later became his wife.