Grandpa Wilson

Grandpa Wilson Lived in the Gay Nineties

My grandfather, Willard Vincent Olson, was born May 27, 1889 in a small town in northwest Pennsylvania. He was the seventh child in a family of nine children.

In those days bathrooms were outside and running water was unheard of. Water was lugged in from outside wells, heated on a coal stove, and baths were take in the wash tub. Ladies' hoop skirts had gone, but the wire frames were a common sight in vacant lots. However, bustles were in use. Merry widow hats half the size of an umbrella were the rage.

Grandpa told me at the age of five he roamed the country at will because there were no automobiles and it was safe. Kids could always mooch a handout from farmer's orchards. It was about this time that the first talking machine was made, soon to be known as the phonograph.

Grandpa said he was never bored. If they weren't pitching hay, milking cows, repairing fences, they were running errands for their parents, sometimes walking several miles.

For fun they swam in the rivers for hours at a time and ice skated on the same rivers in the winter.

My grandpa loved animals. He always had a dog, but his favorite pet was a banty rooster.

When grandpa grew up he went to work for Mountain Bell and was sent west as an auditor for them. He worked for the telephone company for 42 years.

He met my grandma in Montana where she was chief operator for Mountain Bell. They married in Anaconda, Montana on June 12, 1923 and had eight children--seven girls and a boy, who died at age five.

My mother, Mary, was their third child.