The outhouse behind our cabin had five seats. It was very popular in our tiny community. It doubled as our community center. Placed on the banks of the great Kootenai River, someone was always stopping in.
We had our own version of social media in the form of the catalogs that came four times each year. On the day the new catalogs came from “Rears Sawbuck” and “Monkey Wards,” the old catalogs were torn into sections for bathroom tissue that was definitely not soft and fluffy. These pages became our leisure companion for outdoor recreational reading in the outhouse for the next few months.
The new catalogs were immediately friended by the whole community. My mom pored over the plans for a beautiful nine-room colonial house. It came in a kit, shipped by railroad, complete with everything needed down to the hardware. A place like that, we mused, would probably have an indoor toilet and running water. Yes, see, it came with the pipes for plumbing, but at a cost of more than $4,000, it was out of our league.
More in keeping with our budget in the year I was born were drawings (no photos yet) of “charming frocks for spring” ranging in price from 89 cents to $1.98. Pages featuring everything from celebrity fashions worn in Hollywood (they don’t say where) and autographed by stars to notions and stoves and rifles were kept to muse over in our private or semi-private times.
You voted “like” for a page by saving it from consignment to the small house out back and instead pasting it in a place of honor on an inside wall where it became a statement about your status, just like with Facebook.
DEFENDING DADDY
About the time I was yearning for a Shirley Temple coat in Montana, a little girl in a third-grade classroom in Seattle was trying to explain to her teacher what her daddy did for a living. A fireman’s child and a policeman’s son had already described their father’s work when Joella Oldfield, thinking of her father’s luminous western landscapes, stood up to say proudly “My Daddy’s an artist.”
“Yes, dear, that’s lovely,” the teacher replied, “but what does he do?”
From that day on, Joella says, she made up her mind that she’d see to it that people knew that her daddy, nationally acclaimed cowboy artist Fred Oldfield, painted what he had lived: an Old West that was rapidly disappearing. She succeeded. Oldfield celebrated his 93rd birthday last week with a crowd that packed his namesake Fred Oldfield Western Heritage and Art Center in Puyallup.
The center is staffed entirely by volunteers, ages 7 to 90. It celebrated its 10th anniversary by being voted Best Art Gallery in Western Washington in a recent TV contest. At least 100 young students come to the center every month to study with professional artists who volunteer their time. The center is applying for grants to establish a class for special needs children. There already are trained teachers ready to work with them.
Visitors love best their time with Cowboy Fred, who tells them the stories behind his paintings and about the old days in the West. He still paints every day, and most days he’s there working with the kids, which is what he likes best. For Fred Oldfield, working with the children is the most important art he’s ever done.
Visitors to the center can see those catalog days come to life. The very dresses that were 89 cents in the 1934 catalog are displayed on the wall of a replica cabin papered with newspapers.
Of course the Western Heritage Center has a Facebook page, but all this modern stuff hasn’t changed Fred, who is seemingly ageless. Like any true cowboy, he remains humble, kind and polite. And though it’s rumored that he actually removes his Stetson Hat when he sleeps, nobody knows for sure.
Maybe Facebook has changed the meaning of the word “friend” for many, but in Fred Oldfield’s world, where a man’s handshake is his bond, it hasn’t changed a bit.
The Fred Oldfield Western Heritage and Art Center hours are 10:30-11:30 a.m. Mondays and Tuesdays, 2-8 p.m. Wednesdays, and 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturdays.
Dorothy Wilhelm can be reached by email at Dorothy@itsnevertoolate.com.
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