Histories

"Since I lived in Adams County eighteen years of my life, I would like to write about living and growing up between Lauer and Batum. I, Ednes Lobe Melcher, was born May 16, 1922 on the homestead my father's parents moved to in the early 1900's, about ten miles south of Odessa, Washington.

My father Nathaniel Lobe was born near Odessa, Russia in 1895. He came to America in 1898 with his parents Gottlieb and Wilhelmina (nee) Gross. My mother was born in Frank, Russia, in 1900, came to American in 1912. My father's and mother's parents Conrad Uhrich and his wife Mary Katherine, lived in the Ritzville ara before mving to the Lauer area. My parents were married in 1917 and lived on the homestead with my grandmother, Wilhelmina and my great grandmother, Wilhelmina Gross, who lived to be one hundred three years old and to this date is the oldest person bruied in the Odesssa Cemetery.

In April of 1925 a very severe dust storm came to our area, and caught my father in the far end of a field. It came up so suddenly he didn't have time to get home so he unhitched the horses and they brought him home safely.

In 1931 my parents bought a farm two miles west of the homestead, and we had the ranch until after our parents, death and we sold it. My parents had eleven children, Two died in infancy and two passed away as adults. My brothers and sisters went to Lauer school and my father served on the school board for many years. I attended high school in Odessa.

During early years we went to local baseball games Saturday afternoons and Saturday night dances at the school house, with local men playing guitars, banjos, violins and/or accordians. On Halloween, my older brothers and neighbor boys would upset out-houses etc. I have always thought it quite unusual with with so many children none of us ever received a broken bone.

After high school I married Kenneth Porter and lived in Odessa in 1940. We had four children: Larry was born September 28, 1941; Connie born July 17, 1944; Nancy born July 22, 1946 and Bruce born May 19, 1949. Larry and Bruce live in the Seattle area and Connie and Nancy live in Spokane. I have six grandchildren and two great grandchildren.

Remembering back to the depression days, my parents sold homemade butter, cream and eggs. My mother said sometimes they only had a credit check to buy groceries with. But I always had two pairs of shoes. One for Sunday and one for every day, and always had Christmas with nuts, candy and a present. We had two wonderful mailmen that I remember, Rev. H. Brachman and Frank E Wraspir, and we waited anxiously each year for the Sears and Montgomery catalogs to come in the mail"