A tribute to my mother

I have been working for a couple of weeks on a story about the Spanish influence on our area, but as I sat down to finish that work, I realized that tomorrow our mother, Rhoby (Davison Bridenstein) Coady, was born 108 years ago and I felt the need to re-visit all the things that helped to shape her life and the calm with which she met each storm.

One of five children born to James and Flora Davison, she was the second oldest child. The family was a farming family, her father’s parents and an uncle coming to Cheyenne County in the late 1800’s to claim their homestead after serving in the Civil War. They were instrumental in settling the Dalton area and there is a precinct named after them, Davison Precinct, and a historical marker at the old home place, Ickes, where mom’s paternal grandmother ran a stagecoach stop and post office. They were typical of that generation; nothing was wasted in their home.

Mom, born in 1912, was almost 99 when she left this world and it astounds me how much life had changed in that time. Even when I was a child I remember people plowing their fields with horse drawn plows, sinks in houses that were filled with water by pitcher pumps, out houses, stoves that cooked with wood in the kitchen, dresses made out of flour sacks. Those things were strange to me, but to mom, for at least part of her life, those were reality.

Can you imagine a farm truck that didn’t dump the grain with a box hoist, but rather was placed on a platform that raised the front of the truck to dump it out of the slide gate in the back of the box? Smoking meat wasn’t a hobby but rather how meat was preserved. Most farms had a smoke house, a milk house, and a cellar. The cellar was of course dual purpose in Nebraska when tornados hit, but its main use was the preservation of food. Built on the same principle as geothermal heating/cooling, the pioneers knew that food would stay cool in the summer and not freeze in the winter as long as it was kept in a cellar. A lot of farms did not have electricity supplied to them, ice for ice boxes wasn’t always available, and it was 1935 before the Rural Electrification Act was passed, today’s REA.

Ball point pens, computers, calculators, roasters, microwaves, men on the moon, water skiing, vaccines, television, cheeseburgers, 18 different presidents, nuclear bombs, light switches, all of these things evolved during her lifetime.

Our mother was born into the decade of the Spanish Flu and World War I. She was in high school during the “Roaring 20’s”, graduated five months before the stock market crashed and ushered in the Great Depression and the accompanying Dust Bowl Days. Because of the things she had learned from her mother and grandmother, she was an accomplished seamstress, gardener, cook and one of the thriftiest persons you would ever know. She could also butcher chickens like nobody’s business which was a family affair when the time came.

After her first husband was gone, mom raised my sister on her own and did so by working for Cheyenne County Courthouse and then moving to McCook for a job with the Nebraska Department of Roads. During the last 12 years of her career she paid into that “new” program, Social Security. She never took a handout but, as her family had always done, she made do with what she had. There was no WIC or HHS, no food stamps to help make ends meet.

When she married dad, she retired from working outside of the home and focused instead on her family. There is no doubt in my mind that some days spent with my brother and me, she yearned to be back in an office away from our squabbles. She wallpapered, painted, used a band saw to make a nativity scene, built elaborate entries for us to be in the Old Settler’s Parade. She taught Sunday school, served as a Deacon, led 4-H classes with Lucy Harris, belonged to an extension club, a card club, worked election boards, blood drives, food pantries and still found time to share with the grandchildren as they came along. Originally an avid fisherwoman, she loved being on the water and spending time at the lake. Everyone was her friend out there and all the children loved her. In her 90’s she took her first ride on the back of a Harley Davison and then got to see the lake riding on a jet ski.

World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Iraq, mom had someone she cared for serving during those wars yet she never waivered in her faith that they would come home. As she lived, she lost beloved grandchildren and great-grandchildren, her friends, her husband, her siblings and yet she never lost faith that she would see them again. It was not just a religious faith, it was a mother’s faith and that faith served her family, her community and her country.

If she were alive today, she would probably look up from her easy chair, lay her newspaper down and tell us that this too shall pass. Looking back at her life, I would have to agree. Happy Birthday, Mom, we are so proud to be your family.